BBUh^BBBI 




/y 

ESSAY 



SHEWING 



THE INTIMATE CONNEXION BETWEEN OUR 
NOTIONS OF 

MORAL GOOD AND EVIL, 



OUR CONCEPTIONS OF THE FREEDOM OF 
THE DIVINE AND HUMAN WILLS. 



BY 

ROBERT BLAKEY. 



' Necessity seems to be the very basis upon which infidelity grounds itself." 

Bishop Butler's Analogy. 



EDINBURGH : 
PRINTED FOR ADAM BLACK, NORTH BRIDGE ; 

AND LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN AND GREEN, LONDON. 



MDCCCXXXI. 






EDINBURGH : 
PRINTED BY A- BALFOUR AND CO. MDDRY STREET. 



PREFACE. 



It is not without a considerable degree of timi- 
dity that I have ventured to publish the following- 
Essay. It would betray something like insincerity 
were I to say that I did not think it contained 
something worthy attention, either in matter or in 
arrangement ; but at the same time the dryness 
and intricacy of the subject are calculated to con- 
fine my expectations of praise within very mode- 
rate bounds indeed. In these times, abstract ques- 
tions, and refined speculations, are held but in 
comparatively little repute. There has not been 
perhaps, in any period in the literary history of this 
country, a greater degree of lukewarmness and 
indifference, among the reading part of the commu- 
nity, than exists, at the present moment, towards 
such topics and speculations as will be found in the 
following pages. The tide of public taste and opi- 
nion has set strongly in for amusement, and for 
what is aptly enough termed light reading ; and, 

b 



VJ PREFACE. 

in many cases, even philosophy herself has had to 
adorn her person in more light and airy habiliments, 
and to assume a more condescending and accessible 
demeanour, in order that she may maintain her in- 
fluence, or extend her popularity. 

Discussions on human nature are much more in- 
tricate than those on mathematics, or those on the 
sciences, which are generally classified under the 
head of natural philosophy. Here the mind goes 
smoothly forward from one step of reasoning to 
another, without doubt or apprehension of error ; 
but in metaphysics, moral philosophy, and politics, 
the path of inquiry becomes more uneven and rug- 
ged, and the mind is frequently fatigued and be- 
wildered by the consideration of opposite views 
and conflicting principles. This difference in the 
two departments of physical and mental inquiry, 
arises from the very constitution of things. In 
mathematics, for example, the terms employed in 
any process of reasoning are always of a fixed and 
definite nature, and are invariably used in one 
sense ; thus, a hundred stands always for a hundred, 
a square for a square, and a circle for a circle. 
But in subjects relating to the mind of man, to his 
moral constitution, and his political relations, this 
is not the case. What is the precise nature of 



PREFACE. Vll 

mind itself, what is morally good or bad, and what 
is politically expedient or inexpedient, give rise to 
inquiries in which a considerable diversity of opi- 
nion will generally be found to exist. These topics 
are not susceptible of the same strict logical de- 
monstration on which the pure sciences rest, But 
we are not, on this account, to conclude, as the 
language of many who have a dislike to studies 
connected with human nature would seem to imply, 
that there is no real stability or truth in these dis- 
quisitions ; or at least that what little truth can be 
extracted from the cumbersome load of controver- 
sial matter, which ages of dispute have accumulated, 
possesses no great claim to be considered as really 
interesting to man. On the contrary, the truth of 
mental and moral philosophy is founded upon the 
same firm and immutable basis as the other branches 
of knowledge, commonly supposed to possess more 
solidity, because they are generally more attractive. 
And with respect to the value of speculations on 
ethical subjects, when properly conducted, there 
can, I think, be only one opinion, and that a fa- 
vourable one ; seeing that they are closely and in- 
dissolubly connected with doctrines and principles 
of great moment, and manifest importance to every 
human being. 



Vlll PREFACE. 

I was once an ardent admirer of the doctrine of 
philosophical necessity, but in the course of time 
doubts arose in my mind as to its solidity, and more 
particularly as to its moral and religious influence 
on the character, when it becomes firmly established 
in the mind. I uniformly found, that those writers 
who were the most zealous and successful in saping 
the foundations of religion and morality, were pre- 
cisely those who brought the doctrine of necessary 
connexion most frequently and prominently under 
the consideration of their readers ; and in conjunc- 
tion with this circumstance, I almost invariably 
found that the effects of the doctrine of necessity 
upon the moral conduct of its advocates were of a 
very pernicious description, — their principles be- 
coming perverted, and their conduct dissolute and 
profligate. From these considerations, I was led 
to look a little more narrowly into my own views 
on this point ; and the following pages are the re- 
sult of my reflections, which, though they do not 
by any means embrace an abstract logical refutation 
of philosophical necessity, yet they have, I think, 
an evident indirect influence to this end, by bringing 
our common notions of the freedom of the will, on 
^a variety of subjects, more completely under one 
general view 



PREFACE. IX 

I am aware, it will be said, in reference to the 
pernicious influence which necessity is found to 
exercise, that the evil does not arise from the right 
construction and application of the doctrine, but 
from its perversion ; the best doctrines, it may be 
remarked, may be applied to the worst purposes. 
But this is at best but a miserable apology for the 
infliction of positive evil. I have looked with some 
degree of care into those statements and arguments 
brought forward by eminent necessarians on this 
branch of their system, that of rebutting the charge 
of immorality ; and I have always thought these 
statements and arguments vastly more specious than 
solid. There are some systems of human nature, 
which, though not susceptible of a logical refuta- 
tion, being of such an equivocal character as to 
appear suspended, as it were, between truth and 
falsehood, yet do, notwithstanding, exercise as un- 
friendly an influence over our moral feelings and 
habits, as if they were positively and decidedly er- 
roneous, and their error capable of a complete de- 
monstration ; and this I conceive, is exactly the 
case with the doctrine of philosophical necessity. 
It is a doctrine liable from its very nature to be 
misconstrued and abused. I do not know a more 
destructive instrument that can be put into a young 

4 



X PREFACE. 

man's hand, on his setting* out on the journey of 
life, than one of those epitomes of the necessarian 
hypothesis, which are generally drawn up and cir- 
culated by the disciples of this system. 

With respect to the language of this Essay, I 
must throw myself on the charitable indulgence of 
the reader ; and particularly for those few typo- 
graphical errors which have crept into the work, 
from my living at a considerable distance from the 
place of publication. I advance no pretensions to 
fine classical writing ; but I may be allowed to ob- 
serve, that I have endeavoured to be as perspicuous 
as I could, or as the nature of the subject would 
alloy/ ; being firmly convinced, that the most im- 
portant qualification which either writing or speak- 
ing can possess, is that of being readily under- 
stood. 

Morpeth, 3d January 1831. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Page 

Preliminary Remarks ... 1 

CHAPTER II. 

On Liberty and Necessity • . 10 

CHAPTER III. 

Illustrations of the connexion between our notions on Mo- 
rality and Free-will, from a consideration of the laws of 
nature, of nations, and of individual countries 30 

CHAPTER IV. 

Illustrations of the influence which Free-will has in our 
moral opinions of right and wrong, from an examination 
of the public virtues ... 49 

CHAPTER V. 

Influence of the same principle from a consideration of the 
private virtues . . (>G 



Xll CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Page 

On Natural and Revealed Religion . . 86 

CHAPTER VII. 

The same subject continued. — An examination of several 
eminent writers on the Free-will of the Deity 113 

CHAPTER VIII. 

On what are termed the Intellectual Virtues, and on the 
Analogy between the Power of the Will and our Moral 
and Mental Natures . . 148 

CHAPTER IX. 

General Remarks upon the Principles contained in the 

foregoing chapters . . 183 

CHAPTER X. 
A few Theoretical Remarks. — Conclusion. 201 



ESSAY, &c. 



CHAPTER L 



PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 



I should consider myself guilty, in some degree, 
of arrogance and presumption, were I to look upon 
the remarks and opinions contained in this small 
essay, worthy of constituting any thing like a new 
view or theory of morals. I wish what I have 
here said to be looked upon only as hints which 
may, perhaps, be found not unworthy of the con- 
sideration of others who have more learning and 
talents than what have fallen to my lot to possess. 
Moral and metaphysical systems have been very 
numerous, have all been supported with nearly the 
same degree of evidence, and have all nearly met 
with the same fate. This consideration ought to 



2 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

teach all those who write on human nature, some- 
thing' like humility, and not to set too high a value 
upon their own views and principles. But at the 
same time I may be allowed, I hope, to say, (pro- 
bably too much in the spirit of all system-builders), 
that though what I have here advanced may not be 
worthy of being dignified with the name of a 
theory, or be supported with more powerful or 
cogent proofs than other systems furnish, yet the 
views and principles here given may be found as 
plausible as some others which have been taken of 
our moral nature. 

It is not to be expected in moral philosophy 
more than in many other branches of human know- 
ledge, that a complete agreement, a perfect har- 
mony of opinion and sentiment, will be effected 
amongst those who have made the abstract prin- 
ciples of our nature objects of their study and 
reflection. The materials are seemingly so nume- 
rous and inexhaustible, there are so many princi- 
ples of action and varieties of feelings, desires, and 
passions, so many combinations of intellectual and 
moral attainments, habits, and tastes, that the eye 
of the speculative moralist cannot trace the inter- 
minable ramifications and evanescent shades of 
differences ; and, accordingly, we find, that no 



PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 3 

writer on morals has vet been able to reduce all 
the objects of his investigation to a system, which 
has met with a general and ready acquiescence. 
The moral nature of man, like the kaleidoscope, 
may be said to present, from his ever varying cir- 
cumstances, an almost never ending series of fresh 
prospects and new combinations. 

But though man's moral nature presents appear- 
ances greatly diversified, it is only in its more mi- 
nute and particular details ; for in all its leading 
principles it is essentially the same. There is a 
unity of design, an identity of purpose in human 
nature, which are not more conspicuous than it is 
beneficial for us always to keep them in view. 
There is not a single well authenticated fact which 
can be produced to show, that any one of the ge- 
neral principles of moral rectitude is inverted 
amongst any class of people, how rude and barba- 
rous soever they may be ; and amongst the nume- 
rous writers on theoretical morality, the difference 
in principle will, upon close examination, be found 
to be extremely trifling. They have brought forth 
various systems, it is true, and defended them with 
keen pertinacity and an abundance of learning and 
genius, but their systems have generally been found- 
ed upon verbal, rather than upon natural distinc- 



4 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

tions, They have been disputing in form, while 
they have in reality been agreed, and have fancied 
they were discussing the different general principles 
of morals, when they were descanting on imperfect 
analogies, or the constitutional discrepancies of 
language. 

In all the theories of morals which have fallen 
under my notice, I have found little or no mention 
made of the influence which our notions of free- 
will have on our opinions of moral right and 
wrong. Some writers pass by the doctrine of free- 
will with a side glance, others never notice it at all ; 
while those writers who have exclusively treated 
of the doctrine of human freedom, have considered 
the matter in a metaphysical rather than in a moral 
light, and have bewildered and lost both themselves 
and their readers in that labyrinth of darkness and 
subtilty, the mechanical influence of motives. In- 
stead of those writers seizing the general principles 
of our nature which are in unison with, and illus- 
trate our notions of liberty, and | concentrating 
them, as it were, into one focus, where their force 
would have been seen and acknowledged ; they 
have invariably mixed up these principles with 
such abstract and recondite speculations respecting 
the nature of mind and matter, and the general 



PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. O 

powers and constitutions of our intellectual frames, 
as to prevent, in almost all cases, even philosophical 
readers from extracting- the moral from the meta- 
physical materials. 

The principle which must be kept in view in the 
following parts of this work, and which it is the 
main purpose of it to illustrate, is the connexion 
which seems to exist between our notions of what 
is fit and becoming in morals, and the free-will 
which we suppose necessary for the accomplish- 
ment of duties of a moral kind* In no system of 
moral philosophy, nor in any scheme or rule of 
duty, can it be seriously denied, without running 
into absolute absurdity, that man has the power of 
doing certain moral actions ; and in proportion as 
these actions are supposed to be directly influenced 
by the will, he becomes accordingly entitled to a 
certain portion of praise or blame, approbation or 
censure. This is the key-stone to every system of 
morals ; the foundation on which every thing con- 
nected with men's moral responsibility must rest. 
Whatever share of applause or blame we attach to 
a man's character, we always do so in consideration 
of his possessing the power of performing good, or 
of refraining from bad actions. " To perform a 



6 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

morally good action, then, is to fulfil a moral obli- 
gation knowingly and willingly ; and to perform a 
morally bad action, is to violate a moral obligation 
knowingly and willingly" 

But it may be required of me here to state what 
I mean by free-will, or voluntary agency. I 
think these terms have a very extended significa- 
tion, when applied to moral subjects. The term 
free-will is confined to the interpretation which 
Locke put upon it, namely, the power of simply in- 
fluencing our determinations, either one way or 
another ; but it does, in my humble opinion, in- 
clude the power of perceiving what is right or 
wrong,, as well as the power of acting from our 
own suggestions. A man is not considered to have, 
in moral subjects at least, any choice ; or, in fact, 
he is not looked upon as a moral being, if he can- 
not perceive right from wrong. We say a man acts 
in a reasonable or becoming manner, meaning there- 
by, that he keeps all his passions, appetites, desires, 
&c. under a proper and due subjection. But it will 
appear evident to every one, that it is utterly im- 
possible to define such phrases and terms, as free- 
will, voluntary agency, and the like, in an unex- 
ceptionable manner ; for we are obliged, by the na- 



PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS, 7 

ture of language, to be content with very imperfect 
definitions of terms of such a general import. I 
wish the whole of the facts and reasonings contained 
in this essay, to apply to the popular sense in which 
the terms free-will and voluntary agency are used ; 
and no one, I think, but who is captiously inclined, 
will be at a loss to determine what is the popular 
meaning to these terms. 

The distinction which divines and moralists are 
usually in the habit of making between natural and 
moral evil, arises, in my conception, from the power 
of the will. For example, the floods arise sud- 
denly through the night, and destroy and carry off 
many of my flocks grazing upon the plains. This 
event plunges me into great difficulties and distress, 
and I call it by the term, natural evil. Some 
time after, my cattle are carried away by thieves ; 
the bad effects are the same upon my worldly cir- 
cumstances, but my vexation is greater, and I call 
this event by the term, moral evil ; because it is 
performed by those whom I conceived to be pos- 
sessed of the power of free choice. It is just in this 
manner that the distinction between these two 
kinds of evil is always made. These two lines of 
Pope's must be conceived as expressive of the same 
thing, 



8 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

" What makes all physical or moral ill ? 
There deviates nature, and here wanders will."* 

It will also be found, that the distinction between 
moral and physical good is made in precisely the 
same manner. Moral good is that which is done 
by an agent, who is supposed to possess the power 
either to perform or not to perform the virtuous 
action. And in speaking and reasoning on physical 
good, we here transport ourselves beyond the 
bounds or jurisdiction of human power or agency, 
and ascribe the good to the established order of na- 
ture, or to the general laws or special interposition 
of divine providence. 

In maintaining the close and intimate connexion 
which subsists between our notions of moral fitness 
and propriety, and our opinions of free agency, it 
is necessary I should observe that this view of mo- 
rality bears, in its leading principles, a resemblance 
to the treatise of Archbishop King, " On the Ori- 
gin of Evil" But although there be a similarity 
in point of principle, the similarity ends here, for 
what I have advanced is entirely different from any 
thing found in King's work. Besides, I am not 

* Essay on Man. 



PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 9 

prepared to go the whole length with the archbi- 
shop, even in principle, and maintain that " we 
choose things, not because they are good of them- 
selves, but that these things become good because 
we choose them." What I want to show is, that 
our conceptions of free agency enter largely into 
all our notions respecting the moral conduct of 
ourselves and others ; but to point out the exact 
portion of praise or blame which may be attributed 
to our notions of the liberty of the subject, and that 
portion which results from the moral duties per- 
formed being for our benefit and advantage, is a 
task which I cannot take upon myself to perform. 
This I will leave to others. I shall feel happy if I 
have, in any measure, succeeded in impressing up- 
on the attention of future moral philosophers, the 
importance of always keeping the freedom of the 
will in their view. I feel confident, that the more 
this matter is considered, (with candour and im- 
partiality,) the more important will the doctrine of 
the freedom of the will appear ; and that we will 
find that a great portion of our praise or blame at- 
tached to moral actions, will, in many cases, seem 
almost entirely resolvable into the principle, that 
we are supposed to have within ourselves the power 
either to perform or not to perform them. 



10 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 



CHAPTER II. 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 



It may be urged against what I have advanced in 
this work, that I have taken for granted the free- 
dom of the human will ; whereas many learned and 
pious individuals entertain very different opinions 
on this point. I am fully aware of the fact, and 
acknowledge the force of the objection. But in 
framing any system of human nature, something 
must be granted as a ground-work ; and this is 
particularly the case in morals ; for every writer on 
the subject must do one of two things, he must 
either take the liberty of the will for granted, and 
rear his hypothesis accordingly, or he must be a 
necessarian, and adopt the reasonings and language 
of that philosophical school. There is no middle 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 11 

course to steer. Liberty and necessity lie at the 
very threshold of moral inquiries, and you cannot 
take a single step in your investigations without in- 
volving consequences either for or against the one 
or the other of these doctrines. The question 
whether man be a free agent has always been an 
interesting and puzzling one amongst ethical 
writers of every age and country. And though 
some have treated of our moral natures and du- 
ties without any direct reference to either theory ; 
yet they have done so, not from any conviction that 
the question had lost any of its interesting features, 
or had been satisfactorily disposed of, but solely 
from a reluctance to overwhelm themselves and 
their readers with a controversy which requires so 
large a portion of abstract and subtle thinking. 

Though liberty and necessity are placed at the 
head of this chapter, it is not my intention to go 
into the general question on these subjects. They 
have been so amply discussed by persons of the 
highest eminence for learning and talents, that no- 
thing now, worth the trouble, can be possibly 
gleaned from the controversy. The question, 
though a very important one, is also a very dry 
one ; and has at the present time become so barren, 
that no hope can be entertained, that the most pa- 



12 ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 

tient and well-conducted inquiry could be success- 
ful in turning* up new mould> But I think this 
Essay would be defective without some notice of 
the matter ; as what I have said may be looked 
upon as altogether opposed to the necessarian 
scheme. A few remarks on the subject are, there- 
fore, called for ; but they will be confined more to 
the tendency of the doctrine of necessity, than to 
any attempt at a refutation of its principles. To 
aim at the latter course would be altogether fruit- 
less. I consider the doctrine of necessity to be 
one which can never be argumentatively refuted. 
This arises from its very nature ; or perhaps I 
might rather say, from the constitution of the mind 
itself. The principles of liberty and necessity seem 
both to spring up from the natural resources of the 
mind. But there is an important distinction be- 
tween them, which ought always to be kept in view ; 
it is this, that the former doctrine is more closely 
and directly connected with our duties and interests 
as rational beings, than the latter. Men may des- 
pise the doctrine of necessity without the slightest 
danger, but they cannot trample upon free-will 
with the same moral impjmity. 

It has long appeared to me that there is a great 
difference in their nature between those abstract 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 13 

and speculative arguments by which the doctrine 
of necessity is expounded and inferred, and those 
which are used in favour of free-will, even in its' 
absolute sense. I have never met with a single 
person, who, when the necessarian scheme was 
fairly and plainly made known to him, did not im- 
mediately draw the common inference, that man 
could not be an accountable being by this doctrine. 
On the other hand, I have never met with a single 
individual who could see any subtle and puzzling 
objections against the doctrine of liberty. To men 
of the world the doctrine of necessity seems always 
startling, paradoxical, and subtle ; that of liberty 
or free-will, plain, simple, and easily to be under- 
stood. The latter is on this account entitled to a 
stronger claim on our regard, as it seems to recom- 
mend itself by an aptness and fitness to the ordi- 
nary modes of thinking amongst mankind. 

In conformity with this view of the matter, it 
is maintained by some ingenious and candid advo- 
cates for the doctrine of necessity, that all the ar- 
guments which the friends of liberty can advance 
in favour of their own views, and against the 
system of their opponents, are of a popular cast, 
and they ought therefore not to be allowed to stand 
in competition with the philosophical and abstract 



14 ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 

proofs used in support of the necessarian scheme. 
By the phrase popular sense, as used by the writers 
here alluded to, We must mean those arguments 
which the generality of men use against the doc- 
trine in question ; those arguments which lie upon 
the surface of things, which rise up in the mind as 
soon as the necessarian principles are enunciated and 
understood, and which are in fact suggested by the 
simple, the plain, and unsophisticated principles of 
nature. Now if these be the kind of arguments which 
are brought against this doctrine, and are designated 
by the term popular j and if they are objectionable 
merely because they are universally suggested and 
employed ; then I do think they ought not to be 
too lightly esteemed, but, on the contrary, are 
worthy of our most serious consideration and at- 
tention. 

The objections which have been urged against 
popular arguments in the necessarian question, have 
arisen, I have no doubt, from some analogy which 
has been imagined between liberty and necessity, 
and some branches of physical philosophy, in which 
the scientific principles are in opposition to our 
common and every-day notions and beliefs. But 
the slightest glance at the matter will, I think, be 
sufficient to show that any such analogy must be 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 15 

ill founded. The annual and diurnal motion of 
the earth seems contrary to our common notions 
and experience ; but to set these common notions 
in opposition to the philosophical principles, would 
be to show a prejudice and ignorance of a very 
culpable description, and for this reason, that our 
happiness and welfare, as rational and social beings, 
would, in many respects, be seriously affected. But, 
in the case of liberty and necessity, all advantages 
are found in favour of the popular notions we 
have of free-will. It can never be shown, that it 
is pernicious for men to believe, and to act and 
conduct themselves in all matters, in conformity 
with that belief, that they have the power of them- 
selves of doing good or evil ; that their happiness 
and misery in this life are, in a great measure, in 
their own hands ; and that they are really and 
truly free and accountable agents. There can be 
no possible harm in believing all these things ; on 
the contrary, these notions will be found to be of 
advantage to man's individual and social condition ; 
to be in strict unison with the general principles of 
his nature ; in fact, such a belief will strengthen 
arid invigorate him in all his duties, moral, reli- 
gious, and civil. But we have yet to learn the ad- 
vantages which flow from the doctrine of necessity ; 



16 ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY, 

from a firm belief that we are mere mechanical be- 
ings, and that our boasted free-will, of which we 
are constantly talking, and which is interwoven 
with all our ideas and language, is a mere phan- 
tom, and a thing to be despised and held in deri- 
sion ; I say, we have yet to learn what are the 
great and manifest advantages to man, as a rational 
beings which this doctrine is so admirably fitted to 
procure. The fact will be found to be, that there 
is not a single advantage can ever be derived from 
a doctrine hostile to human freedom. Even the 
warmest and most acute advocates for necessity 
have been silent, or nearly so, upon the advantages 
of the system. They have looked upon the doc- 
trine as a thing to be carried about with us, only to 
be shown on particular occasions, when we are in 
company with philosophers, who alone possess the 
power of understanding us ; or as a philosophical 
plaything, which may innocently beguile a few 
tedious hours of speculative leisure, or listless ina- 
nity. But it has never yet been, nor never can be, 
looked upon as any thing but a piece of curious 
speculation ; never as involving any thing in the 
shape of solid utility or rational pleasure. But 
looking, on the contrary, to the system of free-will, 
as it is likely to influence the moral condition of 



OX LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 17 

men by way of opinion, there can be no doubt but 
this doctrine is calculated to exercise a more bene- 
ficial influence over our character than that of its 
opposite. And it is by no means an unimportant 
branch of practical philosophy, to distinguish and 
enforce those opinions and principles, which have a 
direct bearing and extensiye application to our 
condition, our varied wants, and common affairs. 

It is by no means one of the least weighty ob- 
jections against the doctrine of necessity, that when 
we become acquainted and enamoured with it, we 
soon learn to transfer our necessarian language, 
opinions, and principles, to the Deity himself ; and 
talk and think of Him, as a being as unresistingly 
bound down by a moral necessity, as we, his finite 
and dependent creatures are. The transition from 
human necessity is easy and natural, to that of the 
Deity himself. Hence, we are continually told by 
those who are tinged with the necessarian doctrine, 
that God cannot do this, nor he cannot do that ; 
that he has no j)ov:er to act contrary to those prin- 
ciples of his nature with which he has made us only 
partially acquainted. We are apt to look upon the 
Almighty, as a being whose actions and movements 
are regulated by something approaching to the na- 
ture of mechanical agency. Such language and 



18 ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 

opinions are, at bottom, subversive of all religion, 
whether natural or revealed. They exercise a cold 
and unfriendly influence over our religious affec- 
tions ; and in no supposable case, can they prove 
in the least manner advantageous to genuine reli- 
gious sentiments and feelings. 

Our opinions of right and wrong, and the scale 
by which we apportion to each individual action 
what praise or censure is due to it, are so closely 
and indissolubly interwoven with our moral free- 
dom, that it seems an attempt to violate the con- 
stituted order of things, to maintain any such doc- 
trine as that of necessity. Our political relations, 
our moral duties, our religious rites and ceremonies, 
and our whole language, seem founded upon liberty 
of action. As an ingenious author observes, " the 
custom of language authorizes us in denominating 
every action as in some degree voluntary, which a 
volition, foresight, or apprehended motive in a con- 
trary direction, might have prevented taking place." 
And again he remarks, " that the perfection of the 
human character consists in approaching as nearly 
as possible, to the perfectly voluntary state. We 
ought to be, upon all occasions, prepared to render 
a reason for our actions. We should remove our- 
selves to the farthest distance from the state of mere 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. If) 

inanimate machines, acted upon by causes of which 
they have no understanding*."* 

It is a somewhat difficult matter, to trace the 
exact portion of moral good or evil which is created 
by any particular abstract views, or speculative sys- 
tems of human nature. We are apt, in such inves- 
tigations, either to prove too much or too little ; 
either to lessen the dangers or magnify the bene- 
fits, to chime in with our preconceived views and 
purposes. Upon looking carefully at human na- 
ture as a whole, we will find that speculative opi- 
nions have not so great an influence over the mora- 
lity of men, as is commonly attributed to them. 
The moral principles are deeply rooted, they have 
a wide and extended base ; so that the fleeting and 
transitory thoughts which speculative curiosity sug- 
gests, make but a slight impression upon the more 
solid parts of the fabric of our nature. Hence it 
is, that we find the general duties of morality 
nearly universally practised, by men of very oppo- 
site philosophical and religious creeds and opinions. 
Wherever any great difference or disparity exists 
between individuals or communities, respecting 
matters of practical morality, we will find that dif- 

* Godwin's Political Justice, vol. i. p. 69. 



20 ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY, 

ference more justly, in nine cases out of ten, attri^ 
butable to other causes than to the influence of spe- 
culative systems. 

But it would certainly be wrong- to maintain that 
speculation has no influence at all upon our notions 
of moral obligation and propriety. The proof of 
such an influence is every day, in our intercourse 
with mankind, forced upon our attention and ob- 
servation. With respect to the doctrine which is 
more immediately under our consideration— that of 
necessity, I think it is, from its very nature, calcu- 
lated to have but a very limited influence over our 
conduct ; but, at the same time, I do think that, 
where that influence has been exerted, and can be 
clearly traced, the moral effects have been of such a 
character, as to prevent us looking very favourably 
upon this doctrine. It has often been used for the 
worst of purposes. The view which the Turks 
take of the doctrine of predestination, is nothing 
but the application of the principle of philosophical 
necessity ; and the debasing effects which are ob- 
servable amongst this people from this cause, can- 
not be looked upon but with horror and aversion. 
The wicked and frantic acts of some sects of pre- 
tended Christians, which have, at intervals, made 
their appearance in the world, and who have acted 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 21 

upon the letter of the doctrine of necessity, at 
least as far as human nature would allow them, may 
be also cited as instances of the pernicious influence 
which necessarian notions create, especially amongst 
people who are not much in the habit of exercising* 
their minds on other subjects. 

Now, I do think, if we look at the contrary sys- 
tem, that of volition or free-will, we will perceive 
an important distinction between it and its opposite 
doctrine, and it is this, that no abuses can follow 
from even the most determined efforts to carry its 
principles into full operation. If there be an er^pr 
committed here, it will be found " on virtue's side." 
There can be no harm done by men setting up a 
higher standard of morality than what their natures 
will, in the opinions of others, allow them to regu- 
late their conduct by. Such persons may come far 
short of their own wishes or pretensions, but the 
sum of their morality, upon the whole, will be 
found greater than amongst those who act from the 
belief that they have no power of themselves to do 
any thing. And I think we have a striking ex- 
ample of this in the principles and conduct of the 
Stoics. Notwithstanding what Pope says, 

" In lazy apathy let Stoics boast, 

Their virtue fLx'cl, 'tis fix'd as in a frost/' 



«» ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 

they have furnished us with more interesting and 
lofty examples of self-denial and pure virtue, than 
are to be found amongst any sect of philosophers 
in any age or country. What a celebrated French 
writer says of their system is no extravagant eulogi- 
um, but a just and sober tribute to truth and virtue. 
He says, " Never were any principles more worthy 
of human nature, and more proper to found the 
good man, than those of the Stoics ; and if I could, 
for a moment, cease to think that I am not a Chris- 
tian, I could not possibly avoid ranking the de- 
struction of the sect of Zeno among the misfor- 
tunes that have befallen the human race. 

" It carried to excess only those things in which 
there is true greatness, the contempt of pleasure 
and of pain. It was this sect alone that made citi- 
zens ; this alone made great men ; this alone great 
emperors. 

" While the Stoics looked upon riches, human 
grandeur, grief, disquietudes, and pleasures, as va- 
nity, they were entirely employed in labouring for 
the happiness of mankind, and in exercising the 
duties of society. It seems as if they regarded that 
sacred spirit which they believed to dwell within 
them, as a kind of favourable providence, watchful 
over the human race, Born for society, that it was 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 23 

their destiny to labour for it ; with so much the 
less fatigue, as their rewards were all within them- 
selves. Happy by their philosophy alone, it seem- 
ed as if only the happiness of others could increase 
others."* 

The moral philosophy of this celebrated sect was 
founded upon the principle, that man had within 
himself the power to make himself virtuous or 
vicious, happy or miserable. Their wisdom was 
only another term for self-command or self-denial. 
Hence their apparently somewhat paradoxical max- 
ims, that a wise man is void of all passion, or per- 
turbation of mind ; that pain is no real evil, but 
that a wise man is happy in the midst of the sever- 
est torments ; that a wise man is always the same, 
and always joyful ; that none but a wise man is 
free, all others are slaves ; that none but a wise 
man ought to be esteemed a king, a magistrate, 
poet, or philosopher ; and that all wise men are 
great. 

The principles of human liberty were carried to 
the highest by the Stoics, but the fruit of this was 
only a more extraordinary degree of personal vir- 
tue. It is true that they discussed, irrationally, 

* Montesquieu's V Esprit de Loix, Book xxiv* 



£4 ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY, 

subjects at Variance with their habitual and practi- 
cal principles of freedom. According* to the ac- 
count of one who is well qualified to give an opi- 
nion on this point, they discussed the doctrine of 
Fate. " By Fate, the Stoics seem to have under- 
stood a series of events appointed by the immutable 
counsels of God ; or as the law of his providence, 
by which he governs the world. It is evident by 
their writings that they meant it in no sense which 
interferes with the liberty of human actions/ 5 * 

The evidence that the Stoics did not maintain the 
necessity of human actions, does not rest entirely 
upon the evidence of Miss Carter, for I will add 
here a quotation from an essay prefixed to Bishop 
Cumberland's Treatise on the Laws of Nature, on 
the Imperfections of Heathen Morality, in which 
we find the views the ancients entertained of neces- 
sary connexion when applied to moral actions. — 
f€ These are the several opinions of the ancient 
Fatalists, which resolved into two ; the one made 
every thing the necessary effect of the eternal mo- 
tion and concourse of atoms ; the absurdity of which, 
as supposing an eternal chain of effects, without 
any original cause or agent at all, evidently ap- 

* Introduction to Miss Carter's Trans, of Epictetus. 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. c 25 

pears ; and which, by inferring the necessity of 
human actions, and thereby taking away the foun- 
dation and distinction of virtue and vice, and the 
consequent praise and dispraise due unto them, was 
rejected by Epicurus himself on this very account. 
The other made no agent in the world but God, 
who was supposed to be infused, like a soul, through 
the whole universe, and to act in every thing by an 
eternal chain of causes, necessarily connected with 
each other ; and all derived from God (who is 
called Fate,) as the original, or supreme, cause of 
all. 

" This latter, though more plausible than the 
former, yet so plainly inferred such a fate as made 
men's actions necessary, (as both Plotinus and 
Cicero observe,) whereby the nature of virtue and 
vice, of rewards and punishments, were so wholly 
destroyed, that it made the notion itself intolera- 
ble, as Cicero calls it ; insomuch that the defenders 
of it were forced to allow, notwithstanding, (though 
inconsistently with themselves,) that there was a 
power of action, or free agency, in men's minds ; 
and durst not affirm, that human actions were ne- 
cessary ; and the opposite party was so averse to 
it on this account, as to run to the other extreme, 
and maintain, that the voluntary motion or exer- 



26 ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 

Hon of the mind was not at all influenced by fate 
or antecedent causes. These two opposite tenets, 
as they were thought, made the famous Chry sip- 
pus, and the most reasonable and learned of the 
ancients of all sects, step in as moderators between 
the two opinions, and come to an agreement on 
all sides, that, on the one hand, necessity was to 
be excluded from human actions, that so the dis- 
tinction of virtue and vice, and rewards and pu- 
nishments, both of divine and human laws, founded 
upon them, might be preserved inviolated ; so, on 
the other hand, Fate, even with respect to human 
actions, (as well as to external events consequent 
upon them, in which it was absolute and uncon- 
trollable,) was so far to be restrained, as that it 
was to be allowed that antecedent causes were the 
motives of acting, or influenced the mind to act, 
though the principal and efficient cause of action 
was a natural power and free exertion of the mind 
itself. 

" Hence, it appears, that there is no real differ- 
ence betwixt the Platonical and Stoical philosophy, 
in the opinion of Fate, and the freedom of human 
actions ; and that which hath led men, through mis- 
take, to think that it was the constant and settled 
doctrine of the Stoics, that human actions were 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. TJ 

subject to an absolute fatality or necessity, is their 
asserting, in general terms, that all things were 
originally fixed and determined by the laws or 
decrees of Fate, and are carried on and effected 
by an immutable connexion and chain of causes ; 
whereas this fatality or necessity, with respect to 
men, was only understood of external providential 
effects, which were appointed consequential to the 
nature of their actions, presupposed to be free and 
in their own power. For the most eminent and 
rigid Stoics plainly assert the freedom of human 
actions, as hath been proved above ; and the Pla- 
tonics, who are known to be the most zealous 
for the cause of liberty, do yet, with the Stoics, 
constantly maintain Fate, and a determined order 
and series of antecedent causes." 

I think it will appear, upon a careful and dis- 
passionate view of necessity, that it is not, by any 
means, susceptible, even as a matter of abstract rea- 
son, of any thing like demonstration ; that its in- 
fluence on the conduct, when it becomes an object 
of close attention and interest, is calculated to be 
of a pernicious tendency ; and that the system in no 
way harmonizes with our common notions and 
language respecting our moral natures and duties. 
The doctrine of free agency, though not suscep- 



38 ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 

tible of logical demonstration, is, nevertheless, 
free from other weighty objections of having any 
thing dangerous in it, or calculated to be at vari- 
ance with, or to unhinge our opinions on matters 
highly important to, our interests as rational and 
immortal creatures. I am well aware that argu- 
ments have been brought forward by some writers, 
showing that the doctrine of free-will was fraught 
with insuperable objections in matters of morality 
and religion ; but I consider all these arguments so 
far-fetched, so forced and strained, that I cannot 
help attributing them to an excessive degree of lo- 
gical and quibbling refinement ; or perhaps as the 
result of party feeling and excitement rather than 
of sober and rational deduction. 

I should wish it, however, to be kept in view by 
the reader, that whether the doctrine of philosophi- 
cal necessity be well or ill-founded, is a matter of 
little moment in regard to the principles advanced 
in this essay. They are by no means necessarily 
connected with the doctrine. The most rigid neces- 
sarian will admit that we have popular notions of 
liberty ; that nature, to use his own language, has 
wisely entrapped us into a belief that we have the 
power of doing certain things of our own free-will 
or choice ; and that, though we are virtually beings 



ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. L 2fJ 

chained down to the mechanical influence of mo- 
tives over which we have not the slightest control, 
yet we are considered, nominally at least, as pos- 
sessing* certain general conceptions of our own 
power to make elections. Now, I wish what I 
have elsewhere to advance to be tried and estimat- 
ed by our popular notions of liberty, The exist- 
ence of these notions will not, I apprehend, be se- 
riously denied by any one ; and I feel confident, 
that the more our notions of moral approbation 
or disapprobation are considered, with a reference 
to those notions, the more evident will their influ- 
ence over our moral opinions of right and wrong 
appear. 



30 



CHAPTER III. 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF FREE-WILL, 
FROM THE LAWS OF NATURE, OF NATIONS, AND OF 
INDIVIDUAL COUNTRIES. 



It will appear evident, I think, from a slight in- 
quiry into the nature of the rights and obligations 
which are said to flow from the simple law of na- 
ture, as well as those which have been treated of 
in the writings of those authors who have been 
most eminent in expounding this law, that our mo- 
ral notions of political obligation and duty depend 
upon the exercise of the will. When we possess 
the power of deliberating, we are properly said to 
he free, and the effects which follow from our de- 
liberations become, by this means, the objects of 
moral approbation and censure. " When," as Judge 
Blackstone says, " God created man, and endowed 
him with free-will to conduct himself in all parts of 



LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. SI 

life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human 
nature, whereby the free-will is in some degree re- 
gulated and restrained ; and gave him also the fa- 
culty of reason to discover the purport of these 
laws."* 

In performing any action which the law of na- 
ture prohibits us to perform, or to observe any rule 
which it imperiously enjoins us to observe, it is ab- 
solutely necessary, in order to establish moral dis- 
approbation in the one case, or moral approbation 
in the other, that man should have the power of 
choosing between good and evil ; that he should be 
considered as the sole and real author of his own 
actions, and that he should be totally uninfluenced 
by necessity, persuasion, or compulsion. " But as 
the principal reason why man is reputed the author 
of his own actions, is because he voluntarily under- 
takes them, we must always suppose in the ivill 
some degree of spontaniety, at least in those actions 
that fall under the cognizance of a human tribunal ; 
for where a man is entirely debarred of choice, and 
what he does is utterly against his consent, there 
the action is not to be imputed to him, but to the 
person who imposed such a necessity upon him, 

* Commentaries;, vol. i. p. 39. 



32 LAWS OF NATIONS, &C, 

and to which he, the immediate agents is in spite of 
himself forced to lend his limbs and assistance. "* 

It is from the entire absence of restraint, which 
confers upon all human actions the character of 
moral iniputability, that we are led to consider 
man as their real author, and look upon him as 
justly chargeable with all the consequences which 
follow from them. No reason can be given why he 
is thus morally responsible, but that he knowingly 
and willingly performs the action, and that he pos- 
sesses the power within himself, either of doing it, 
or not doing it, as he may think fit. 

In the formation of governments, and in the 
rules and duties which these governments prescribe 
amongst themselves, for their mutual support or 
advantage, and which are generally denominated 
the laws of nations, the same principle holds good, 
that voluntary power is the only thing which can 
confer moral responsibility. Whatever theoretical 
opinions we may form as to the origin of society, or 
of the nature of the social contract, if we wish to 
frame to ourselves correct notions of the constitu- 
tion and object of governments in general, we must 
assume that the wills or voluntary powers of the 

* Puffendorf, vol. i. p. 43, with notes by Barbeyrac. 
6 



LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 33 

individuals of a nation, have been either formally or 
tacitly surrendered into the hands of the sovereign 
or executive power of a country, and that the one 
or the other is empowered to act only in conse- 
quence of this individual consent, so to speak, hav- 
ing been conferred on either, to enable them to act 
for the general welfare. " The essence of a people's 
sovereignty, is the general will."* The nature of 
every regular constituted state, seems to partake 
of the nature of a covenant, either real or implied, 
between the majority of those who have quitted the 
state of nature, and formed themselves into a regu- 
lar body, and those on whom, by common consent, 
political power is conferred, for the safety and hap- 
piness of the whole. Hence that general and compre- 
hensive principle in politics, that the will of the people 
is the supreme law. "After one or more persons are 
made choice of for the ruling, of the new state, 
those who are invested with the supreme authority ', 
engage to take care of the common safety, and the 
others, at the same time, promise to yield them all 
faithful obedience ; whereby, also, each particular 
man submits his will to the will and pleasure of the 
person or persons so chosen, and makes over to 



* Eosseau du Contrat. Sociale, liv. iii. 
D 



34 LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 

the same, the power of using* and applying all his 
strength and force, as the good and defence of the 
public shall require. And when once this cove- 
nant is duly executed, there is nothing wanting to- 
wards the completion of a perfect and regular go- 
vernment"* 

" Nothing but consent can form originally col- 
lective bodies of men. Nothing but consent, there- 
fore, to which men are determined by the sensibility 
of their natures, by an antecedent law, could have 
raised an army, or created that force by which it 
is assumed that all laws, those we call civil, and 
those we call natural, were alike imposed on man- 
kind.^ 

It does not, I apprehend, materially alter the 
matter, by saying, that the various theories on the 
origin of governments, and of the existence and na- 
ture of the social contract, are little better than idle 
speculations, and that no such thing as a practical 
social contract was ever entered into by any people 
with its rulers. The reason whv these theories of 
society are so frequently appealed to, and are in 
such general use amongst authors who write on the 
leading principles of the law of nations, is, that 

* Puffendorf, vol. ii. p. 191. 

f Bolingbroke's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 40ti. 



LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 35 

these writers are under the necessity of taking for 
granted the principle of individual or collective 
consent, before they can unfold their laws, or 
make the moral obligation of the axioms and rules 
of legislation manifest to the mind, and cordially 
acquiesced in. Without this doctrine of social li- 
berty, the writings of persons on general law would 
be a complete mass of confusion, from which no- 
thing intelligible or useful could be extracted ; for 
no reason could be given for any one single law, 
nor any obligation felt, where the only principle 
laid down was pure force or compulsion. The ap- 
peals, therefore, which are so frequently made by 
Puffendorf, Grotius, and such like writers to the 
uiill or voluntary powers either of nations or of 
individuals, is nothing but the expression of a ge- 
neral law of our nature, which we are bound to 
recognise and to obey. 

The rules and principles which regulate the inter- 
course and transactions, whether of war or of com- 
merce, between one state and another, are funda- 
mentally the same as those which regulate the 
transactions between individual and individual. 
A nation may be considered in the light of a single 
moral being, and whatever negotiations or treaties 
it may enter into with other nations, a free and 



36 LAWS OF NATIONS, &C 

unconstrained exercise of its will, is indispensably 
necessary to stamp these negotiations or treaties 
with moral validity, to make them binding on the 
parties ; and to justify, in the eye of reason and 
justice, any hostile or threatening measures which 
may arise out of the non-performance of these mu- 
tual covenants and agreements. If one nation 
make war, without any pretext, on another, reduce 
its strength, and place it in a situation in which it 
can have no choice with respect to the covenants 
and agreements which may be demanded of it by 
the invaders, then such treaties do not become 
valid or binding ; and why? Because the nation 
has not been at liberty to act ; it has been deprived 
of that voluntary power which is necessary to con- 
stitute moral obligation, whether it respects nations 
or individuals. Writers on the laws of nations 
have enumerated five conditions which are neces- 
sary to render a national covenant or treaty obli- 
gatory. 1st, That the parties have the power to 
consent. Qd, That they have consented. 3d, That 
they have consented freely. Mh, That the consent 
be mutual ; and, 5th, That the execution is pos- 
sible. * 

It may also be remarked, that the principles by 

* Marten's Law of Nations^ p. 48. 



LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 3J 

which we justify our opposition to any established 
government on account of its despotism or tyranny, 
are entirely founded upon voluntary agency. If 
the government of a state bring the community, 
instead of protecting them, into troubles and diffi- 
culties ; if it produce famine, nakedness, and civil 
commotion, the contract which had previously ex- 
isted between the governed and the governors be- 
comes void, for the former have been placed by the 
latter in exactly the same state as if one private 
person were to make a violent attack upon the life 
or property of another. The public and the indi- 
vidual sufferer are placed in a situation in which 
they have no choice, no exercise of their voluntary 
powers, but resistance or destruction. Violence must 
therefore be opposed to violence, and force to force. 
" Subjects, or particular persons, have a right to 
defend themselves against their prince, when re- 
duced to the utmost extremity by him, and when 
he deals with them as their perfect enemy."* 

The general principles of all law in civilized 
countries, are founded upon voluntary agency. 
The laws enacted for the punishment of the greatest 
crimes, as well as those enacted for slight mis- 
demeanors, the will, the choice, the deliberation, 

* Piiffendorf, vol. ii. p. 229. 



38 LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 

of transgressors enters as a necessary ingredient 
into the various kinds and degrees of prescribed 
coercion. In murder, which is a crime against the 
law of nature, and of the foulest description, malice, 
direct or implied, must be proved ; the culprit 
must, from his general conduct, be considered ca- 
pable of distinguishing right from wrong, and not 
to have committed the horrid act unintentionally 
or from mistake. If provocation should have been 
given by the deceased to the prisoner, if the latter 
had been put into such a state of excitement and 
passion by the former, as to be deprived of the free 
exercise of his will, or power of deliberation, then 
he is no longer considered in the eye of the law as 
a murderer, but guilty of man-slaughter only, and 
a milder punishment is inflicted accordingly upon 
him. Should the provocation have been of such a 
nature or extent, as might, if not resisted, have put 
the prisoner's own life in jeopardy, or left him no 
other choice between running the risk of being 
murdered himself or destroying his assailant, then 
a verdict of justifiable homicide is returned, no 
crime is imputed, and the person is acquitted. 

When an idiot or a madman takes away the life 
of a fellow-creature, we lament the event, but 
never think of lavishing our execrations upon him 



LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 39 

for the deed he has committed. There is no moral 
demerit attached to this death any more than there 
is attached to deaths from earthquakes, pestilences, 
or any other casualties of nature. The act of vio- 
lence must have moral agency incorporated in it to 
call forth our indignation, and to merit its proper 
chastisement. 

In the case of theft or felony, the same principle 
holds good to the very letter. Where the will is 
under control or compulsion, no crime, in the eye 
of the law of England, is committed. Persons who 
steal from necessity, to prevent actual famine, are 
not guilty of theft. There are many high legal 
authorities for this opinion, but I shall merely, as 
the position may not be admitted by some, mention 
a few. In a book called Britton, of high authority 
amongst lawyers, and edited in the reign of Ed- 
ward the First, it is mentioned in the 10th chapter, 
that " those are to be deemed burglars, who feloni- 
ously^in time of peace, break into churches or houses, 
or through walls or doors of our cities, or our 
boroughs ; with exception of children under age, 
and of poor people, who, for hunger, enter to take 
any sort of victuals of less value than twelve 
pence;* and except idiots, and mad people, and 

* About the value of fifty shillings of our present money. 



40 LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 

others that cannot commit felony." In the " Mir- 
rour of Justices" a work written before the Nor- 
man conquest, it is mentioned that sentence of death 
shall not be carried into execution upon those who 
are in "poverty, in which case you are to distin- 
guish of the poverty of the offender, or of things ; 
for if poor people, to avoid famine, take victuals 
to sustain their lives, or clothes that they die not 
of cold (so they perish if they keep not themselves 
from death,) they are not to be adjudged to death, 
if it were not in their power to have bought their 
victuals or clothes ; for as much as they are war- 
ranted so to do by the law of nature." Grotius 
says, " that in case of extreme necessity, the pris- 
tine rights of using things revives." He further 
says, " For the opinion has been acknowledged 
among divines, that, if any one, in such a case of 
necessity, take from another person what is requi- 
site for the preservation of his life, he does not com- 
mit theft."* Puffendorf- says, " We conceive, there- 
fore, that such a person does not contract the guilt 
of theft, who, happening, not through his own fault, 
to be in extreme want, either of necessary food, or of 
clothes, to preserve him from the violence of the 

* Grotius, Book ii. chap. ii. 



LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 41 

weather, and cannot obtain them from the volun- 
tary gift of the rich, either by urgent intreaties, or 
by offering somewhat equivalent in price, or by en- 
gaging to work it out, shall either forcibly or pri- 
vily relieve himself out of their abundance." " The 
law chargeth no man with default where the act is 
compulsory and not voluntary, and where there is 
not consent and election ; and, therefore, if either 
there be an impossibility for a man to do otherwise, 
or so great a perturbation of the judgment and rea- 
son, as in presumption of man's nature cannot be 
overcome, such necessity carrieth a privilege in itself. 
Necessity is of three sorts : — necessity of conserva- 
tion of life ; necessity of obedience ; and necessity 
of the act of God, or of a stranger. First, of con- 
servation of life ; 'fa man steal viands (victuals) 
to satisfy his present hunger, this is no felony nor 
larceny"* " But in every species of injustice, it 
is very material to examine whether it is commit- 
ted through a start of passion, which commonly is 
short lived ; or from deliberate, prepense malice. 
For whatever proceeds from a short, sudden fit, is 
of slighter moment than what proceeds from fore- 
thought and preparation. "t 

* Lord Bacon. Law Tracts, p. 55. 

f Cicero's Offices, Trans, by Guthrie, p. 20. 



42 LAWS OF NATIONS, &C 

In cases of libel, it is laid down as a general rule, 
that a greater latitude is allowed in the use of in- 
jurious or libellous language in speaking than in 
writing. The reason of this is, that in writing, 
more deliberation, and a freer exercise of the will, 
is supposed to take place, than when persons ex- 
press themselves in the hurried and unreflecting 
manner which characterises the conversational in- 
tercourse of the world at large. 

In civil covenants, bargains, or agreements, it is 
necessary that the parties making or entering into 
them, should have the power of choice, or a free 
unconstrained exercise of their will ; otherwise, 
such legal instruments become null and void. 
" There can be no doubt," says Cicero in his Offi- 
ces, " that a man is not bound by those pro- 
mises which he makes, either under the influence 
of fear, or through the seduction of deceit." # Pro- 
mises or covenants, made by children, idiots, or 
madmen, are considered no way binding ; and 
even such as are made by persons under the in- 
fluence of intoxication, become, in many cases, de- 
prived of their character of moral and legal va- 
lidity, for want of this necessary qualification — 

* Trans, by Guthrie, p. 23. 



LAWS OF NATIONS, &C 43 

the exercise of the will. " That promises as well 
as contracts may be valid and obligatory, it is ab- 
solutely necessary that there be the voluntary con- 
sent of the parties ; for every promise and con- 
tract being attended with some inconvenience -from 
the necessity it lays us under of doing such or 
such a thing, which before we were at our liberty 
to have performed or omitted, there can be no 
better argument why we should not complain of 
this subjection, than that we took it upon us, by 
our own free-will when it was in our power to 
have refused it." # 

All human laws are framed upon general princi- 
ples, and are, on this account, always considered in 
some degree imperfect ; for it is impossible for 
legislators to take into their consideration the pre- 
cise measure of voluntary agency which enters in- 
to every crime, and award a proportional degree 
of punishment accordingly. This imperfection, 
which may be found in the laws of all nations, does 
not, however, enter in so great a degree into our 
moral opinions and judgments, with respect to the 
conduct of those who in any way infringe upon 
the laws. What induced him to commit the act ? 

* PuiFendorf, vol. i. p. 298, 



44 LAWS OF NATIONS, &C 

What provocation had he ? What motives led 
him to this strange behaviour ? These are ques- 
tions asked by us at all times, when the illegal con- 
duct of our fellow-mortals passes in review before 
us, Every circumstance of aggravation or extenu- 
ation is dwelt upon and taken into consideration ; 
we weigh the temptations which lead to crime, in 
a finer balance than the laws employ ; and we form 
our judgments, as to the portion of demerit, by a 
nicer moral analysis, and a more refined power of 
discrimination, than is possible to be brought into 
operation before human tribunals. 

In strict unison with these opinions, I do not 
know where a finer example can be furnished, 
to show the manner in which we form and 
regulate our opinions of merit or demerit of any 
action, than in a quotation I shall make from one 
of the most elegant and acute writers which this 
country has ever produced. It will be seen from 
the quotation, how anxious we are to find out the 
motive or intention of our action, and ascertain the 
precise degree in which the will was concerned in 
the transaction ; and also, how we alter and regu- 
late our moral opinions and judgments, in exact 
conformity with the portion of voluntary agency ', 
which is exhibited in the various steps of this sup- 



LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 15 

posed transaction. It may be necessary to remark 
here, in passing, that the words intention, effect- 
ing, &c, are meant to stand for the will, or the 
voluntary powers generally ; and this interpreta- 
tion of the writer's language, in this instance, is 
not only necessary to make the passage intelligible, 
but is strictly agreeable to his own moral princi- 
ples, which may be seen treated of more at large 
in the work from which this quotation is taken, 

" Just now I hear a report, that a human body 
is found dead in the neighbouring* fields, with 
marks of violence upon it. Here a confused suspi- 
cion arises in my mind of murder committed ; but 
my conscience suspends its judgment till the true 
state of the case be better known. I am not as 
yet in a condition to perceive those qualities of 
this event, which ascertain the morality of the 
action ; no more than I can perceive the beauty or 
deformity of a face while it is veiled, or at too great 
a distance. A passenger informs me, that a person 
has been apprehended, who confesses himself the 
murderer ; my moral faculty instantly suggests, that 
this person has committed a crime worthy of the 
most severe and exemplary punishment. By and 
by I learn, from what I think good authority, that 
my former information is false, for that the man 



46 LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 

now dead, had made an unprovoked assault on 
the other, who was thus driven to the necessity 
of killing him in self-defence ; my conscience im- 
mediately acquits the manslayer. I send a messen- 
ger to make more particular inquiry into this af- 
fair ; who brings word that the man was accident- 
ally killed, by a fowler shooting at a bird, who, be- 
fore he fired, had been at all possible pains to dis- 
cover whether any human creature was in the way ; 
but that the deceased was in such a situation that 
he could not be discovered. I regret the accident, 
but I blame neither party. Afterwards, I learn, 
that this fowler was a careless fellow, and though 
he had no bad intention, was not at due pains to 
observe whether any human creature would be hurt 
by his firing. I blame his negligence with great 
severity, but I cannot charge him with guilt so 
enormous as that of murder. Here my moral fa- 
culty passes several different judgments on the 
same action ; and each of them is right, and will 
be in its turn believed to be right, and trusted to 
accordingly, as long as the information which gave 
rise to it is believed to be true. I say the same ac- 
tion, not the same intention ; a different intention 
appears in the manslayer from each information ; 
and it is only the intention and affections that the 



LAWS OF NATIONS, &C. 47 

moral faculty condemns or approves. To discover 
the intention wherewith actions are performed, rea- 
soning is often necessary ; but the design of such 
reasoning is not to sway or inform the conscience, 
but only to ascertain those circumstances or quali- 
ties of an action, from which the intention of the 
agent may appear. When this becomes manifest, 
the conscience of mankind immediately and intui- 
tively discloses it to be virtuous, or vicious, or in- 
nocent."* 

Many abstract and practical principles of policy, 
observed by different European nations, may be at- 
tributed to the doctrine of free-will. Nothing 
seems, at first sight, more arbitrary and unjust, than a 
principle strictly observed by the English govern- 
ment, namely, the supremacy of the seas, and the 
right of searching the vessels of neutral nations. 
To look at the question in its natural aspect, as it 
were, we would conclude that a principle of this 
kind was contrary to the plainest suggestions of na- 
tural right ; for nature seems to have made the 
seas to furnish an easy and mutual intercourse be- 
tween one nation and another ; and that nothing 
more decidedly wears the appearance of unjust mo- 

* Beattie's Essay on Truth, p. 18.3. 



48 LAWS OF NATIONS, &C* 

nopolization, than for any one nation to lay claim to 
that which appears to have been made for the use 
and benefit of all. Yet, to maintain this supremacy 
by England, is considered as a cardinal principle of 
her policy ; and she has waged many wars for this 
exclusive right, and must go to war again, when- 
ever she is in danger of losing it, if she consults 
her true interests and power as an independent na- 
tion. The reason of this is plain and manifest. 
England is peculiarly situated, and were she to al- 
low other neighbouring- nations to assume mari- 
time superiority, her destruction as a nation would 
be speedy and inevitable. She has therefore no 
choice between keeping the upper hand, and that 
too by force when necessary, and losing her power 
and greatness. She resembles a man whose life is 
in perpetual danger from those around him, who 
has no choice, whose will is under constraint, and 
who is therefore obliged to endeavour to preserve 
his existence, by such actions of force or stratagem, 
as would, at other times, and under other circum- 
stances, when his will was not so situated, be con- 
sidered, and very properly, as cruel and unjusti- 
fiable. 



49 



CHAPTER IV. 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE INFLUENCE WHICH FREE 
WILL HAS IN OUR MORAL OPINIONS OF RIGHT AND 
WRONG, FROM A CONSIDERATION OF THE PUBLIC 
VIRTUES. 



A very considerable portion of the conversation 
and discussion respecting the public and private con- 
duct of men, arises from our perpetual efforts to 
gain a knowledge of their motives to action ; or ra- 
ther to know the exact share of voluntary power 
which each individual exhibits in his moral behavi- 
our. If we look narrowly at the public declama- 
tions against, or the public eulogies in favour of, any 
conspicuous character, we will find that nine-tenths 
of what is said on either side, may be attributed, 
not so much to the nature of his actions themselves, 
whether injurious or beneficial, wise or foolish ; but 
to what were the probable or known motives which 
led him to action ; what share hkfree will had in 



50 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

the transactions, and how far he is to be considered 
in the light of a necessary or voluntary agent. The 
same moral investigation is carried on from persons 
of celebrity to persons of lesser note ; throughout, 
in fact, the whole fabric of social life ; and so habi- 
tuated are we to this judicial inquiry into the 
share of moral approbation or disapprobation, which 
we deal out to our fellow-men by this measure, as a 
standard of voluntary agency, that we pass through 
long and intricate investigations with inconceivable 
rapidity, and without, in hundreds of cases, ever 
being the least conscious of the matter. 

Public virtue is of the highest kind. The virtues 
of patriotism, moral and political courage, and a 
fervent and disinterested zeal for the moral and so- 
cial advantage and happiness of mankind, do always 
receive unqualified commendation from mankind ; 
and rank in their estimation considerably higher in 
the scale of merit than virtues of an exclusively pri- 
vate nature. To devote the whole of your time, 
your talents, your fortune, and your bodily energies 
to promote the welfare of others ; to be instant in 
season and out of season when the public welfare 
is at stake ; to lay aside all private considerations of 
interest or ambition, and to pursue the public good 
with steady and unerring aim, neither turning to the 



PUBLIC VIRTUES, &C. 51 

right hand nor to the left ; is a moral endowment of 
the greatest importance and highest merit. And if 
we will look at the matter attentively, we will find 
that it is always supposed by mankind, that persons 
possessing such public virtue, and who, by this 
means, receive such high praise and commendation, 
have the power of the will in greater strength and 
perfection, than persons who fill more subordinate 
stations in society. 

To prefer the good of others to our own private 
emolument or advantage, and not only to give the 
former a silent preference, but to be actively engag- 
ed in the means of promoting it, does seem, in the 
eyes of people in general, to excite wonder and 
amazement as well as praise. The love of private 
gain, honour, and distinction, is so strong a princi- 
ple in all mankind, that it appears to every person 
to be no ordinary labour in the task of moral dis- 
cipline, to keep the sordid and private passions in 
due and proper subjection, and not to allow them 
to exercise an improper influence over our public 
conduct. Many persons have the knowledge and 
intellectual endowments to qualify them for public 
stations, who are, nevertheless, entirely unfit for 
such elevation, on account of this want of proper 
moral discipline ; this system of self-denial, prac- 



5°2 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

tised over the more prominent and vigorous pas- 
sions of the selfish kind implanted in our nature. 

We admire and praise actions of bravery and he- 
riosm, because we see an exemplification of the 
power the will has in subduing and keeping in pro- 
per order and discipline all those passions of the 
mind and body, which in ordinary cases, and in ordi- 
nary persons, exercise an almost unbounded control 
and authority over both. We suppose, and suppose 
justly, that such persons as give evidence of great 
magnanimity, and a contempt of personal danger and 
hardships, are possessed of a stronger power of the 
will, a greater degree of self-command, than what peo- 
ple in general can exhibit under similar circumstan- 
ces of trial and danger. And whenever it happens that 
we perceive, or think we perceive, that this heroism 
and public disinterestedness does not flow sponta- 
neously from the person himself, but have been in- 
fluenced or created by compulsion, or the fear of 
danger to himself or friends ; we immediately with- 
draw a portion of our admiration and praise ; and 
our sentiments of esteem and veneration seem to 
ebb and flow, like the waters of the ocean, accord- 
ing to the degree of influence which the will is sup- 
posed to exert over the conduct of the individual 
whose actions have solicited our notice and regard. 



PUBLIC VIRTUES, &C. 53 

» 

A statesman, let us suppose, is zealously and suc- 
cessfully engaged in removing some public griev- 
ance, or in conferring some signal benefit upon his 
countrymen. While we are simply gazing upon 
the grievance to be removed, or looking by antici- 
pation on the benefit to be obtained, we lavish our 
encomiums upon him, with no niggardly hand. Let 
it be hinted to us that in what we see hinf doing, he 
has a deep interest in himself ; and in a moment 
our feelings are changed towards him ; though we 
may still think him an object worthy of a consider- 
able portion of our praise. By further inquiry we 
learn, that not only himself, but a whole host of his 
friends and dependants, are likely to be greatly be- 
nefited by the public labours in which he is engag- 
ed. Here our approbation falls another step. 
Again, we hear, from good authority, that in what 
he is engaged for the public good, he is not to be con- 
sidered in the light of a voluntary agent ; that what 
he is now doing is against his own principles and 
his own express wish and desire ; and that he was 
dragged into the present measures entirely to save 
his own life and reputation. Now, he appears naked 
before us ; he is considered as a mere tool or instru- 
ment in the hands of others, and we strip him of 
all moral approbation, and think him no more en- 



54 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

titled to our grateful consideration, than if lie were 
an inanimate object. 

The vast majority of mankind view the public 
actions of men in official stations, through a daz- 
zling and deceptive medium. The former are si- 
tuated at too great a distance to see all the little 
springs and motives to actions which have so ge- 
neral and powerful an influence over the exertions 
of the latter. But we always find, that in propor- 
tion as we become acquainted with the secret mode 
of managing public affairs, and see more clearly the 
little arts and contrivances which even great men 
have to use for the accomplishment of national ob- 
jects of importance, our esteem and admiration be- 
come, in a considerable degree, less ardent, for we 
perceive more of mechanical skill, and less of vo- 
luntary agency, than we were apt to imagine when 
we looked from a distance at the movements of 
public characters. 

When we read of the heroic conduct of Brutus, 
and of his steady and inflexible resolution to avenge 
the cause of his country against the cruelties and 
despotism of Tarquin ; and, more particularly, when 
Ave hear his magnanimous declaration, that he 
would have ample revenge for that consummate act 
of villany, the violation of the high minded and vir- 



PUBLIC VIRTUES, &C. 55 

tuous Lucretia, our admiration ascends to the 
highest possible pitch. But I think it will be found, 
upon reading the account of that deeply interesting 
part of Brutus's conduct, where he condemns to 
an ignominious death his two sons, for a conspiracy 
against him, that our admiration droops a good 
deal ; we do not so readily perceive the propriety 
of this step ; we feel a tardiness in giving our praise 
to this action, and it requires a considerable effort 
to enter into the feelings and views of the father. 
The reason, I apprehend, is, that we are apt to sus- 
pect that he is not altogether master of his own 
conduct on this occasion ; we feel a lurking sus- 
picion that something like frenzy, or ostentation, or 
a momentary impulse of vain glory, had influenced 
him ; for it is always with great difficulty that we 
can suppose a person so far removed out of the 
influence of one of the most powerful and over- 
whelming impulses implanted in human nature, an 
impulse that almost in all cases sets the will at de- 
fiance, and particularly, as in this case, by a mere 
piece of abstract reasoning, on the principles of po- 
litical expediency ; it is difficult, I say, to come to 
a conclusion, that Brutus was influenced entirely 
by patriotic principles, when he inflicted such a se- 
vere punishment on his sons. 



56 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

But, be this as it may, certain it is that we are 
naturally inclined to view, with a good deal of sus- 
picion, any public character who challenges our 
notice by great and uncommon personal sacrifices 
for the public good. When we see a man engaged 
in arduous and difficult enterprises, where personal 
dangers have to be encountered, if we in the small- 
est degree suspect that his courage is tinctured with 
rashness or frenzy, or that he is standing on the 
very brink of insanity, we alter our opinion exceed- 
ingly respecting himself and undertakings ; and if 
we have been led, before knowing the true nature 
of his character, to bestow praises upon him, we im- 
mediately withdraw our approbation, on account of 
his actions not being under the government of his 
will, or as we are apt to term it in loose conversa- 
tion, because he is not guided by reason and pru- 
dence. 

Here the fate of Lucretia, which has just now 
been alluded to, furnishes a good illustration of the 
connexion between voluntary power, and the praise 
we bestow on the deeds of public characters. 
Through many hundred years she has been, and 
very justly, handed down to us as a heroine of chasti- 
ty, a martyr to conjugal fidelity ; and the sole and 
only claim she has for this honourable distinction, 



PUBLIC VIRTUES, &C. 5J 

which has been conferred upon her by the unani- 
mous suffrages of every civilized people since her 
day, is, that her will had not the slightest participa- 
tion in the deed which was perpetrated upon her. 
If we were to suppose, for one moment, that in her 
intercourse with Tarquin she had ever relaxed in 
one tittle in her virtuous resolution to preserve her 
honour, her name, instead of being one on which 
we lavishly bestow our praise and admiration, 
would have sunk into merited oblivion, or, if it had 
been remembered, it would only have been re- 
membered to her shame. 

There is not, perhaps, to be found, either in an- 
cient or modern times, a more sublime and noble 
instance of real heroism and greatness of soul, than 
that exhibited in the conduct of Cornelius de Wit, 
the well known Dutch admiral. He was most in- 
humanly assassinated, with his no less renowned 
brother, by a misguided and infuriated mob. Cor- 
nelius was falsely accused of entering into a con- 
spiracy to poison the Prince of Orange. The ac- 
cusation was greedily received by a highly in- 
flamed and misguided populace. He was called 
before a court of justice, the judges of which, over- 
awed by the violence and fury of the crowd with- 
out, basely consented to condemn him to punish- 



58 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

ment. " This man," says Hume, " who had 
bravely served his country in war, and who had 
been invested with the highest dignities, was de- 
livered into the hands of the executioner, and torn 
in pieces by the most inhuman torments. Amidst 
the severe agonies which he endured, he still made 
protestations of his innocence, and frequently re- 
peated an ode of Horace, which contained senti- 
ments suited to his deplorable condition, and which 
are thus translated by JBlacklock. 

" The man, whose mind on virtue bent, 
Pursues some greatly good intent, 

With undiverted aim ; 
Serene beholds the angry crowd, 
Nor can their clamours, fierce and loud, 

His stubborn honour tame. 

Nor the proud tyrant's fiercest threat, 
Nor storms, that from their dark retreat 

The lawless surges wake ; 
Nor Jove's dread bolt that shakes the pole, 
The firmer purpose of his soul 

With all its power can shake. 

Should nature's frame in ruins fall, 
And chaos o'er the sinking ball 
Resume primeval sway ; 



PUBLIC VIRTUES, &C. 59 

His courage chance and fate defies, 
Nor feels the wreck of earth and skies 
Obstruct its destined way."* 

No one can look upon tlie true greatness of 
mind, this real heroism of spirit, here presented to 
our view, but with sentiments of wonder and ad- 
miration. Here every thing which is dear to a 
man on earth, his worldly dignities, his family, his 
reputation, and his life, were all sacrificed ; yet at 
the moment when death in its most frightful and 
hideous form, presented itself, he could, with calm- 
ness and serenity of soul, give utterance to lan- 
guage and sentiments the most elevated and no- 
ble. But how slender would have been the por- 
tion of our admiration, with what coldness and un- 
concern would we have beheld the grandeur of his 
magnanimous spirit, even at the moment of its be- 
ing disengaged by the ruthless hand of the assassin 
from its tenement of clay, if we had thought he 
was not absolutely master of his own actions ; or 
that, by a kind of compulsion, or preconcerted ar- 
rangements, he had been led to make this display 
of his heroic firmness of virtuous principle, to ex- 
cite the sympathy, or call forth the applause of pos- 
terity. We would have considered he had played 

# Hume's History of England, vol. vii. p. 362. 



60 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

a trick upon us, and would have listened to the ao 
count of his treatment and sufferings with compar- 
ative apathy and indifference. 

But I would not by any means wish it to be un- 
derstood, that there was the slightest circumstance 
in this warrior's life, or melancholy and tragic end, 
which could give countenance to such an imputa- 
tion as is here made, merely for the sake of the ar- 
gument ; for he was really a brave and noble 
character, and one who calls forth our highest 
praise and admiration. The words of the poet 
may be truly applied to him : — 

" By pleasure unsubdued, unbroke by pain, 
He shines, in the Omnipotence he trusts ; 
All-bearing, all-attempting, till he falls, 
And when he falls, writes vici on his shield."* 

Nothing appears to us an object of greater ad- 
miration and esteem, than a brave and disinterested 
warrior, when he is called forth to fight for the 
honour or liberty of his country ; when perhaps 
the welfare, happiness, nay, the lives of millions may 
be depending upon the issue ; we look with won- 
der at his self-command, to his indifference to dan- 
ger, in this fierce conflict of destructive passions ; 

* Young's Night Thoughts. 



PUBLIC VIRTUES, &C. 6l 

where an ordinary man would be almost bereft of 
reason, and lose every thing like self-possession. 
All those passions which exercise an almost despo- 
tic authority over the ivill, in common men, and 
on common occasions, are all subjected in his 
bosom to proper obedience and discipline ; and it 
is this self-command, which principally calls forth 
our admiration. Should he not be able to uphold 
the supremacy of his will or self-possession, but give 
way to some passion or other, such as fear, rash- 
ness, &c, then no previous knowledge or success 
in warlike affairs, will screen him from a con- 
siderable portion of our indignation and contempt. 
There is an anecdote told of a Polish General, 
which pointedly shows how much of our admira- 
tion of military prowess is to be attributed to the 
influence which the will is supposed to exercise 
over all brave heroes in battle. He had for some 
time past lost both his hearing and his sight ; but 
he could not be prevailed upon to relinquish the 
habits and dangers of the camp ; and he always ac- 
companied the army, under the superintendence of 
a proper guide, an officer who was a near relative. 
The Poles and Russians were at war, and the hos- 
tile armies were encamped within gun-shot of each 
other, but separated by a small river. By day- 



62 ILLUSTRATIONS, &b. 

break, our Polish General wandered unperceived 
by liis guide, along the front of the army, and close 
to the river's edge, with his pipe in his mouth. 
The Russians seeing him to be an officer of rank, 
and assuming such airs of indifference and non- 
chalance, sent a few of their best marksmen to see 
if they could plant a shot in the general's uniform. 
They tried for some time, and the shot plied like 
hailstones round the old veteran, while he, in re- 
turn, showed the most complete carelessness of life, 
by twirling- his cane on his finger, and putting on 
the most indifferent airs imaginable. But he had 
the good fortune to escape unhurt, and when he 
was stammering back the Russians gave him three 
cheers for his bravery. It happened that an armis- 
tice was opened by the two contending armies, 
and the commander of the Poles invited the Rus- 
sian general and his staff to his camp. The latter, 
perhaps by way of compliment, were very liberal 
in their praises on the courage and bravery of the 
Poles, and instanced the contempt of personal dan- 
ger evinced by one of their officers that morning. 
Some of the Polish camp, who had heard of the 
circumstance alluded to, could not contain them- 
selves from laughing outright ; and the Russians 
could not conceal their chagrin, when they were 



PUBLIC VIRTUES, &C. 63 

told, that the person on whom they had bestowed 
such praises for his magnanimity and contempt of 
danger, and whom they had endeavoured so indus- 
triously to remove from this world, was both blind 
and deaf. 

Dr. Smith vary justly observes that " The degree 
of the self-approbation with which every man, upon 
such occasions, surveys his own conduct, is higher 
or lower, exactly in proportion to the degree of 
self-command which is necessary in order to obtain 
the self-approbation. Where little self-command is 
necessary, little self- approbation is due. The man 
who has only scratched his finger, cannot much ap- 
plaud himself, though he should immediately ap- 
pear to have forgot this paltry misfortune. The 
man who has lost his leg by a cannon-shot, and 
who the moment after speaks and acts with his us- 
ual coolness and tranquillity, as he exerts a much 
higher degree of self-command, so he naturally 
feels a much higher degree of self-approbation."* 

What a noble, disinterested, and truly virtuous 
public character does Cincinnatus appear to us, 
when the deputies of the Roman senate waited up- 
on him to invest him with the office of consul, and 
clothe him in the purple robes of that high office, 

* Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol. i. p. 327. 



64 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

they found him peaceably ploughing' his field, and 
attending to his domestic concerns. Instead of 
manifesting-, by sudden or extravagant expressions of 
joy, what might be looked upon as a natural degree 
of pride, in being elected to such a high situation, 
he accepted the offer with unassuming diffidence 
and modesty ; and calmly remarked to his wife, 
when about to leave his home, that their little 
farm would have to remain untilled until his re- 
turn. Having succeeded by his steadiness, justice, 
and impartiality, in restoring peace and harmony 
amongst the jarring factions and interests of Rome, 
and in securing the affections of all the citizens, he 
laid down his public authority, contrary to the ex- 
pressed wishes of the state, and returned to his 
peaceable and humble mansion, and way of life. 
Nothing can be more truly noble than such con- 
duct as this. We admire the man who could lay 
down power, riches, and worldly distinctions of 
his own accord, things which men in general pur- 
sue with such ardour, and relinquish frequently only 
with the loss of life itself. We are led by this conduct 
to suppose a high degree of self-command, which 
could keep in subjection passions of a strong and 
overwhelming nature. This act of volition is the 
constituent element in our admiration. Any thing 
like compulsion or necessity would prove entirely 



PUBLIC VIRTUES, &C* 65 

destructive of the honour and praise we bestow up- 
on such a character. 

How high is our admiration of the man who be- 
comes a martyr for the good of his country, or to 
testify the truth of his religion. We are surprised 
at his firmness and composure at the sight of the 
instruments of torment and of death ; and marvel 
how he is able to subdue the conflicting passions 
which we suppose must agitate his bosom when, 
for instance, he casts the last look on his wife and 
children. But how slight would our sympathy be 
for his sufferings, and how slender a portion of 
praise would we bestow upon him, were we satisfi- 
ed that there was no great self-denial exercised by 
him, or that the power of volition was but feebly 
exerted. We would view his fate with little or no 
concern. 

In all these instances which have been mention- 
ed respecting the public virtues, we may see the 
power the will has in regulating our opinions and 
expressions in moral virtue. Let us suppose in all, 
or any of the cases, cited, that the freedom of the 
will, or the power of volition, were taken away, 
and what would then remain to be an object of 
praise to the individuals ? What would then be 
left which would entitle us to use the epithets, mo- 
ral obligation, fitness, and propriety f 

F 



66 



CHAPTER V. 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES, 
FROM AN EXAMINATION OF THE PRIVATE VIR- 
TUES. 



Virtue is frequently considered by moral writers, 
or rather defined by them to be — a proper balanc- 
ing of the affections and passions ; and if we con- 
sider for a moment the real constitution of our 
moral natures, this will not appear a very improper 
or defective definition. Man is a being- possessed 
of various moral powers, affections, and passions, 
suited to the various ends and objects in his pro- 
gressive state. These powers, affections, and passions 
are developed in a regular and systematic order, 
so as to correspond with his years, his wants, and 
the other physical and intellectual principles of his 
constitution. But as our faculties are narrow and 
circumscribed, and our passions apt to lead us into 
errors in practice, by holding out prospects of pre- 



PRIVATE VIRTUES. 6j 

sent advantage, and by deterring us from our duty 
by present pain and inconvenience ; it were neces- 
sary, therefore, that there should be a counter- 
balancing power, to direct and guide us ; and this 
power is the will. Our passions become the ob- 
jects on which our wills are exercised ; they are 
the rude and unshapen materials of all that is vir- 
tuous or vicious in man. To regulate and guide 
our passions is the path nature has pointed out to 
us to enlarge our knowledge, to remedy our mis- 
fortunes, to correct our errors, and to constitute 
that just harmony in the inward man which is the 
real essence and perfection of virtue. The end 
and object of all good moral education is not to 
exterminate the passions and affections of our na- 
ture, but to subdue, guide, and regulate them, and 
to increase by exercise the power otfree will. By 
this means we acquire that power of inward reflec- 
tion, that self-command, and that moderation, in 
all our tempers and desires, which go to establish 
that dignified consistency of character, which is 
always an object of admiration and esteem. 

" Passions, like elements, though born to fight, 
Yet, mix'd and soften' d, in his work unite : 
These 'tis enough to temper and employ ; 
But what composes man, can man destroy ? 



68 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

Suffice that reason keeps to nature's road, 
Subject, compound them, follow her and God. 
Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train ; 
Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain ; 
These mix'd with art, and to due bounds con fin' d. 
Make and maintain the balance of the mind : 
The lights and shades, whose well accorded strife 
Gives all the strength and colour of our life."* 

There is scarcely any moral quality more highly 
extolled, notwithstanding what Swift says about 
its being an alderman-like virtue, than that of pru- 
dence or discretion. A prudent or discreet man is 
one who has all his passions and feelings, desires 
and appetites, under due subjection to his will or 
reason. He is not taken by surprise ; he exercises 
due caution in all matters affecting his interests ; 
and this moral government of himself gives him the 
vantage-ground over those who give the reins to 
their passions and inclinations. 

Temperance is another virtue of high value. 
As its very name imports, it arises from a proper 
regulation of the passions, particularly the bodily 
ones. Of so great an importance is this virtue to 
individuals, and even to the community at large, that 
all other virtues and intellectual endowments .are 

* Pope's Essay on Man, Epis. *>. 



PRIVATE VIRTUES. 69 

of little avail where temperance is neglected. It 
is properly called a cardinal virtue ; and it may be 
considered as the corner-stone of a man's usefulness 
and reputation in the world. 

When a man is represented to us as possessing 
great modesty and chastity, and is in a remarkable 
degree chaste in his conduct and conversation in the 
world, particularly amongst the female sex, we 
immediately give him our meed of praise ; and if 
it be further represented to us, that he is one who 
has withstood all the fashionable blandishments of 
seductive pleasure, which a refined and luxurious 
gallantry could furnish, and has never in one in- 
stance been known to swerve from the standard 
of rectitude and propriety, our praise will be height- 
ened to a degree of admiration. But let it be hinted 
to us that this indifference to pleasure arises from 
other causes than those to which it is, in the judg- 
ment of the world, ascribed ; that the person in 
question, either from disease or from nature, was 
incapable of feeling the impulses of gross sensuality ; 
and we immediately alter our tone respecting him ; 
his chastity becomes no longer a theme of our 
praise and admiration ; and we would no more 
think him entitled to participate in our moral feel- 
ings of approbation and disapprobation than a 



70 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C 

wooden post or a marble statue. The reason of 
this change of our sentiments and opinions is ob- 
vious. He is not considered in the light of a moral 
agent, for want of those natural passions on which 
the will could be exercised. 

It is a common axiom in morals, that the stronger 
the temptation to any crime, the greater apology 
is there for committing it ; and, on the other hand, 
the greater the temptation, the greater is our vir- 
tue, if we succeed in overcoming it. Now the 
truth of this position cannot be maintained but upon 
the supposition that the principle endeavoured to 
be established here is correct — that a considerable 
portion of praise and blame is bestowed upon bad 
or good actions solely on account of the different 
degrees in which the will is supposed to have been 
engaged in the moral or immoral transactions. 
Lord Shaftsbury observes, " If by temper any one 
is passionate, angry, fearful, amorous ; yet resists 
these passions, and, notwithstanding the force of 
their impression, adheres to virtue ; we say com- 
monly in this case, that the virtue is the greater, 
and we say well ; though, if that which restrains 
the person, and holds him to a virtuous-like beha- 
viour, be no affection towards goodness or virtue 
itself, but towards private good merely, he is not 






PRIVATE VIRTUES. 71 

in reality the more virtuous, as lias been shown 
before. But this still is evident, that if voluntarily \ 
and without any foreign constraint, an angry tem- 
per bears, or an amorous one refrains, so that 
neither any cruel or immodest action can be forced 
from such a person, though ever so strongly tempted 
by his constitution, we applaud his virtue above 
what we should naturally do, if he were free from 
this temptation and these propensities.* 

On the same principle, divines tell us, and tell 
us truly, that Adam's first transgression was greatly 
enhanced in guilt, inasmuch that there was no strong 
or natural temptation to commit the crime. There 
was no violent passion to gratify, nor any craving 
appetite to appease. 

In the virtues of charity and benevolence, the ef- 
fect of the will is very conspicuous in directing 
and guiding our sentiments of approbation. To 
help the necessitous, and be kind and benevolent to 
our friends and neighbours, are moral qualities of a 
very engaging kind ; but, however liberal we may 
be in dispensing to the poor the good things of this 
life, and however tender and sympathetic our de- 
portment towards them, if the objects of our cha- 

f Characteristics, vol. ii. 37. 



72 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

rity, as to the world at large, imagine they see any 
thing like compulsion ; or conceive that the ivill 
has not much to do with these acts of kindness and 
benevolence ; if, in short, they perceive that these 
acts of charity do not come, as it is termed, from the 
hearty then they never think of conferring praise 
upon the donors. If the world think that vanity, 
or ambition, which are commonly considered as in 
some degree laudable, have a considerable share in 
stimulating us to deeds of charity and beneficence, 
a proportional deduction is made from that portion 
of approbation we would be entitled to, were our 
actions looked upon as the spontaneous efforts of 
our wills. Hence I suppose constituted the pro- 
priety of that maxim of Scripture relative to chari- 
ty, " let not thy left hand know what thy right 
doeth." 

Let us illustrate the power which the will has 
in creating in us moral feelings of approbation, by 
the following case. A ship is wrecked upon the 
coast, and the crew are seen by many individuals 
from the shore, soliciting assistance for the preser- 
vation of their lives, the loss of which, from all hu- 
man probability, seems inevitable. The ship, dash- 
ing against the rocks, is struck by a heavy sea, 
which sweeps the captain off the wreck, and throws 



PRIVATE VIRTUES. /O 

him upon a rock, where he is enabled to reach the 
land in safety. The bystanders, seeing there is no 
time to be lost, and prompted by humanity to make 
an effort to save the remainder of the crew, succeed 
in throwing a rope across the ship, by which the 
crew are drawn ashore in safety. Now, there are 
here two powers engaged to produce the same ef- 
fect — the preservation of life ; but the one is an 
object of moral praise, and the other is an object of 
no praise at all. The wave that rescued the cap- 
tain from the very jaws of death, may possibly be 
called a fortunate wave ; but no one would think 
of calling it a disinterested wave, or a humane or 
praiseworthy wave. He may attribute his preser- 
vation to a special act of providence, but in doing 
this he recognises the power of divine free agency. 
On the other side, the case is different. The ex- 
ertions of the men saved human life, as well as the 
wave which washed the captain on shore ; but the 
former become objects of our praise and admira- 
tion ; and solely for this reason, that they possess- 
ed the power within themselves of either making 
these humane exertions, or not making them. 

When Gil Bias met the lame beggar on the 
highway, his charitable feelings were wonderfully 
heightened towards him when he perceived that 



74 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

the object of his compassion, besides the hat stretch- 
ed out for alms, had a musket resting on two 
sticks, with its muzzle pointed towards him. But 
no one, I think, would for a moment imagine that 
the commiseration and pecuniary assistance which 
Gil Bias bestowed upon this sturdy mendicant, 
could, under such circumstances, assume the name 
and character of true charity ; and for this obvious 
reason, that the apprehensions of personal danger 
may be supposed to have here extorted that which 
ought to have proceeded from what we are accus- 
tomed to consider as the source of true benevo- 
lence—the spontaneous bounties of the heart. 

The common sense and common language of 
mankind are so clearly and unequivocally express- 
ed upon this point, that we cannot possibly be 
wrong in conducting our speculations in this in- 
stance upon these universal feelings, and principles 
which have a place in every bosom, and actuate 
every human action. Whenever it is perceived 
that a man is under some restraint ; that he has not 
had the free exercise of his moral powers ; and that, 
however well disposed he may be towards a virtu- 
ous conduct, he has it not in his power to follow it ; 
we exonerate him altogether from the imputation 
of wickedness ; and consider that as he has not had 



PRIVATE VIRTUES. 7<5 

the free exercise of his will, he has incurred no 
moral responsibility, and is not a fit object for dis- 
approbation or censure. And in like manner, when 
we perceive that a man acts from frenzy or delirium, 
or without knowing what he does, we do not look 
upon him as morally accountable for his actions, be 
they of a good or a bad tendency. 

When we hear a person eulogized for his private 
virtues, we can safely determine a priori, that he 
is a person who has all his moral powers under 
complete subjection and authority ; that he is not 
rash or intemperate on the one hand, nor weak, ir- 
resolute, or vacillating on the other. He gives to 
every question which comes before him a due share 
of his attention ; and is not so easily surprised into 
bad, nor deterred from good actions as either weaker 
or inferior mortals. Such a character carries al- 
ways with him the instruments of his own and 
others happiness. Cool, calculating, and pruden- 
tial, he is always upon the alert to turn every cir- 
cumstance to the advantage of virtue. He knows 
when to exercise caution and doubt, and when to 
be decisive and determined. The passions of his 
mind, which are implanted in his nature for certain 
valuable ends and purposes, are, in a great measure, 
under his command ; and the line of demarcation 



76 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

between gross sensuality and temperate indulgence 
is always, comparatively speaking, accurately and 
clearly defined to him. Day after day he subjects 
his conduct to the close and scrupulous ordeal of 
his own conscience, from which he derives secret 
and delicious pleasures as a reward for his upright- 
ness, and also additional resolution to overcome 
the remaining portion of imperfection which is so 
closely interwoven with the better part of his con- 
stitution. In like manner, we can conduct our rea- 
sonings respecting immoral characters with the same 
unerring certainty and precision. When we hear 
a man censured for his immorality and indecencies, 
we immediately conclude that he is a slave to some 
passion or other ; that he has no command over his 
virtuous affections ; that he lays himself under 
temptations to vice which he has not the resolution 
to overcome ; and that when the suggestions of 
duty and the desires of vicious gratification come 
in contact, he becomes an object of weakness and 
irresolution, and yields himself up a reluctant vic- 
tim on the altar of folly and wickedness. 

This doctrine is beautifully laid down by Milton, 
in his Paradise Lost. In the ninth book of that 
fine poem, he portrays Adam and Eve going forth 

in the morning to their daily labours, to prune the 
1 



PRIVATE VIRTUES. 77 

luxuriant foliage of the myrtles and spring* roses ; 
and to wind the sweet and pliant woodbine over 
their arbour of innocence. Eve wishes to leave 
him to labour by herself, but Adam endeavours to 
persuade her that she may possibly, being alone, fall 
more easily into temptation of one desirous of their 
destruction, and whose existence and machinations 
the angel had just a little before made known to 
them. They discuss the power of the will ; and 
Adam is very desirous of impressing upon her 
mind that if their wills be separated or divided, the 
strength of both will be impaired, and they will the 
more readily fall victims to their seducer ; but if 
cordially united, they will impart to each other ad- 
ditional strength and vigour, and will eventually 
triumph over every temptation. Eve, however, 
saw no danger before her ; she maintained that her 
will was strong and powerful, and she longed for 
an opportunity of showing the strength of her vir- 
tue. After many kind expostulations from her 
partner, against her following a path so full of dif- 
ficulties and dangers, he at length yielded to her de- 
sires, but not before giving her the following beau- 
tiful and philosophical admonition : — 

" O woman ! best are all thing's as the will 
Of God ordain'd them; his creating band, 



78 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

Nothing imperfect, or deficient left, 

Of all that he created ; much less man, 

Or ought that might his happy state secure — 

Secure from outward force, within himself 

The danger lies, yet lies within kis power ; 

Against his will he can receive no harm ; 

But God left free the will : for what obeys 

Reason is free, and reason he made right ; 

But bid her well beware and still exert, 

Lest, by some fair appearing good surprised, 

She dictate false, and misinform the will, 

To do what God expressly hath forbid — 

Not then mistrust, but tender love, enjoins 

That I should mind thee oft ; and mind thou me ! 

Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve ; 

Since reason, not impossible, may meet 

Some specious object, by the foe suborn'd ; 

And fall into deception unawares, 

Not keeping strictest watch as she was warned. — 

Seek not temptation then, which to avoid 

Were better ; and most likely if from me 

Thou sever not; trial will come unsought. — 

Would' st thou approve thy constancy? — approve 

First thy obedience ; the other who can know, 

Not seeing thou attempted ? Who attest ? 

But if thou think trial unsought may find 

Us both securer, than thus warn'd thou seemest, 

Go ! for thy stay, not free, absents the more : 

Go in thy native innocence ! rely 

On what thou hast of virtue, summon all ! 

For God towards thee has done his part, do thine/' 



It appears evident that the great majority of mo- 



PRIVATE VIRTUES. 79 

ral writers, whatever their distinct theories may be, 
agree in this, that it is entirely by the exercise of 
the will that men regulate their praise or blame of 
any character ; and learn to deal out their censure 
and applause with unerring justice and accuracy, 
through all the different degrees of moral duty and 
delinquency. It is always the motive, the wilU 
the intention, the voluntary efforts of the indivi- 
dual, which entitle him to praise or blame. And 
hence the doctrine so strictly insisted on by many 
moralists, that when men perform actions laudable 
in themselves, but which are supposed not to have 
had their origin in the will, they are not entitled 
to any commendation for the performance. Dr. 
Beattie informs us that, in Aristotle's opinion, " mo- 
ral virtue is a voluntary disposition or habit ; and 
that moral approbation or disapprobation are excited 
by those actions and affections only which are in our 
own power ; that is, of which the first motion 
arises in ourselves, and proceeds from no extrinsic 
cause." The Doctor adds. — " This is true philo- 
sophy ; it is accurate, perspicuous, and just, and 
verv properly determines the degree of merit of 
our intellectual and constitutional virtues. A man 
makes proficiency in knowledge, if in this he has 
acted from a desire to improve his nature, and qua- 



80 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

lify himself for moral virtue, that desire, and the 
action consequent upon it, are virtuous, laudable, 
and of good desert." " Is his constitution natu- 
rally disposed to virtue ? — he still has it in his power 
to be vicious, and therefore his virtue is truly me- 
ritorious ; though not so highly as that of another 
man who, in spite of outrageous appetites and 
tempting circumstances, hath attained an equal de- 
gree of moral improvement."* " Man's virtue and 
vice," says Marcus Aurelius, " consists not in those 
affections in which we are passive, but in ac- 
tion. To a stone thrown upward, it is no evil to 
fall, nor good to have mounted."! " The virtues 
of the soul," says Cicero, " and of its principal part 
the understanding, are various, but may be reduced 
to two kinds. The first are those which nature 
has implanted, and which we called not voluntary. 
The second kind are more properly called virtues, 
because they depend on the will ; and these, as ob- 
jects of approbation, are transcendently superior. 
Of the former kind are docility, memory, and all 
the virtues distinguished by the general name of 
genius or capacity ; persons possessed of them are 
called ingenious. The latter class comprehends the 

* Essay on Truth, p. 426. t Essay on Truth 



PRIVATE VIRTUES. 81 

great and genuine virtues, which we denominate 
voluntary, as prudence, temperance, fortitude, jus- 
tice, and others of the same kind."* 

Bishop Butler, in his analogy says, that " our 
perceptions of ill desert in vicious actions, lessens, 
in proportion to the temptations men are thought 
to have had of such vices." It is entirely upon this 
principle that man's consciousness of good and evil 
rests. All men of sound mind impute their own 
moral actions to themselves, whether they be good 
or bad. It is from a consciousness, and firm con- 
viction of this truth, that when we will and desire 
things which cause us trouble and uneasiness, we 
are more grieved in spirit, than when the same 
amount of evil comes upon us from ignorance or 
error. What is called in moral language a good 
conscience, is nothing else but a firm conviction in 
the mind of the person possessing it, that the evil 
actions which may be, from malice or misrepresenta- 
tion, laid to his charge, or the troubles in which he 
may be involved, cannot be traced to his choice, 
or voluntary powers. A trifling evil, caused by 
our own free-will, is productive of a greater portion 
of uneasiness and mental suffering, than a greater 

* Essay on Truth, p. 429. 
G 



82 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

evil brought upon us by unavoidable misfortune, or 
by the act of another person. The force of con- 
science is frequently so powerful, that when evils 
of a serious or disgraceful nature have been brought 
upon us by our own choice, we feel the most poig- 
nant and smartingpains of self-reproach; even though 
we have succeeded in keeping our delinquencies 
from the eye of the world, or eluded the punish- 
ment of the laws. But when evils of a similar mag- 
nitude have befallen us by force, or by the concur- 
rence of circumstances, over which we are sup- 
posed to have no control, we may think our for- 
tune hard, and be loud in our complaints, but we 
will not be troubled with the irritating gnawings 
of the worm of conscience. I think Archbishop 
King is right in his grounds for founding the dis- 
tinction between grief, when it proceeds from acts 
chosen by ourselves, and when it arises from un- 
avoidable causes or misfortunes ; he says, " If the 
grief arising from a crime be distinct from that 
which is occasioned by misfortune, it is plain that 
this can be on no other account, than because the 
crime proceeds from a free agent, i. e. one who de- 
termines himself to action, but the misfortune from 
a necessary one." # The pains of conscience is a 

* Origin of Evil, page 201. 



PRIVATE VIRTUES. 83 

term expressive of the power of the will ; we re- 
pent and repine at having done those things only, 
which we conceive we had in our own power not 
to have done. 

Those private virtues, the performance of which 
is supposed by mankind to be in a great measure 
enforced, by a strong and original passion in our 
nature, are not so highly praised as those virtuous 
habits and dispositions, which we consider removed 
at a farther distance from any similar bias. It is not, 
for example, considered any great stretch of moral 
virtue for a man to love his own children, or for 
children to feel and express an ardent attachment 
to their parents. The various duties which flow 
from the relation of parents and children are se- 
cured a pretty general performance, even in those 
states of society where the scale of general morality 
is very low, by the innate vigour of strong natural 
affections ; and on this account, mankind never 
express any high degree of praise or approbation 
for the performance of what nature seems to have 
laid them under by a certain degree of compulsion. 
Filial and parental affection are of the highest im- 
portance, as upon them may the various moral obli- 
gations of life be said to rest ; and, if mankind were 
to portion out their praise upon the duties which 



84 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

are more immediately enforced by these affections, 
according to the standard of their real importance, 
our moral approbation would necessarily be very 
high. But this is contrary to the common notions 
and language of mankind. If a man live in the 
habitual contempt of the other duties which mora- 
lity enjoins upon him, he will not be screened from 
general execration by the circumstance, that he is 
kind and affectionate to his offspring, or to his own 
parents. People in general will say, he deserves 
little praise for expressing those sentiments of ten- 
derness and affection, for the beasts of the field do 
the same. 

The same principle will be found to pervade the 
whole of our moral affections and obligations. 
Whenever our duty lies in opposition to some strong 
passion or affection, then is our virtue more noble 
and magnanimous, and calls forth a greater portion 
of praise and approbation from our fellow-men. 
We must be free to a certain degree, even from 
our moral desires and impulses ; there must be room 
for the practice of self-denial ; there must be a 
struggle with the temptation ; before we can pro- 
perly insure any portion of praise for our con- 
duct. And agreeably to this view, the late Dr. 
Brown observes, that " His is the only genuine 



PRIVATE VIRTUES. 85 

strength of heart who resists, not the force of a 
few fears only, to which, even in the eyes of the 
world, it is ignominous for man to yield ; but the 
force of every temptation to which it would be un- 
worthy of men to yield, even though the world, 
in its capricious allotments of honour and shame, 
might not have chosen to regard with ignominy 
that particular species of cowardice."* 

I shall conclude this chapter by a quotation from 
Dr. Beattie, on the general nature of our moral 
responsibility. " Moral agency/ 5 he says, " further 
implies, that we are accountable for our conduct ; 
and that if we do what we ought not to do, we de- 
serve blame and punishment. My conscience tells 
me that I am accountable for those actions only 
that are in my own power ; and neither blames nor 
approves, in myself or others, that conduct which 
is the effect, not of choice, but of necessity. Con- 
vince me, that all my actions are equally necessary* 
and you silence my conscience for ever, or at least 
prove it to be a fallacious and impertinent monitor ; 
you will then convince me, that all circumspection 
is unnecessary, and all remorse absurd."t 

* Philosophy of the Mind, vol. iv. 562, 
■f Essay on Truth, page 355* 



86 



CHAPTER VI. 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE FREE-WILL, 
FROM AN EXAMINATION OF NATURAL AND REVEAL- 
ED RELIGION. 



It may, I think, be laid down as a general maxim, 
that natural and revealed religion united contain 
the will of God to man ; natural religion being 
made manifest to us by the constitution of nature, 
and our moral powers ; and revealed religion by 
the express declaration of God himself. This will 
contains the law made for our especial direction 
and observance. The framing and promulgation of 
any law, do necessarily presuppose two things ; — 
first, that the law is made by a being or power, 
which has within himself, or itself, the free-will ei- 
ther to make the law or not to make it ; and se- 
condly, that the creatures for whom the law is 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 8/ 

made, have the power to observe its rules and pre- 
cepts. 

With respect to the first principle — a principle 
involved in the nature of all law, it is clear that our 
obligation to observe it must be in consideration of 
its having* proceeded from a lawgiver, from one 
who is possessed within himself "of ample powers to 
enforce its statutes upon those for whom the law is 
made. If the law were to be the effect of necessi- 
ty, of fate, of chance, or of accident, it could con- 
tain nothing- obligatory, as it would then want that 
indispensable ingredient in all laws, according to 
the conceptions we form of them, a discretionary 
power to punish transgressors in case of disobedi- 
ence. The will of God, we say, is the law for our 
guidance, and he has willed, desired and enacted 
that our happiness shall be inseparably connected 
with the observance of this law ; we are therefore 
entitled to draw the conclusion, that the force and 
value, the moral obligation of this law, are solely 
and exclusively derived from its having proceeded 
from the free, unfettered, and unconstrained exer- 
cise of the will of an all-powerful and intelligent 
author. 

Let us view this matter in any light we please, 
we will find that we can form to ourselves no just 



88 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

or consistent conceptions of the Deity, or of the 
laws of his creation and providence, without we 
take for granted his attribute of spontaneity, or the 
power of doing whatsoever he pleaseth. And on 
this point I perfectly agree with Archbishop King, 
who maintains that the law of God is good, holy, 
and binding upon us solely from its having been 
willed into existence by him. King says,— 

" The divine will is the cause of good in the crea- 
ture, whereon they depend, as almost every one ac- 
knowledges ; for created beings have all that they 
have from the will of God : nor can they be any 
thing else than what he willed. It is plain, then, 
that all these are conformable and consonant to his 
will, either efficient or permissive, and that their 
original goodness is founded in this consonancy. 
And since all things proceed from one and the 
same will, which cannot be contrary to itself, as it 
is restrained within its proper bounds by infinite 
wisdom, it is also certain that all things are consis- 
tent with each other, and that every thing contri- 
butes as much as possible to the preservation of it- 
self and the whole system ; which we must reckon 
their secondary goodness. All the goodness, then, 
of the creatures, is owing to the Divine will, and 
dependant on it ; for we cannot apprehend how 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 89 

they could be either good or evil in themselves, 
since they were nothing at ail antecedent to the act 
of the divine will : and they were as far from being 
good with regard to God himself, till, upon willing 
their existence, he, by that act of election, both con- 
stituted good in relation to him, and, by an unity 
of will, made them agreeable to another. It is 
evident that the divine will was accompanied in this, 
as in all other cases, by his goodness and wisdom, 
and the immediate consequence of this is, that things 
please God, L e. are good"* 

The second supposition, that our amenability to a 
law arises from our ability to observe its injunc- 
tions, will also be fully apparent, if we will attend 
for a moment to the nature of the thing. To deny 
that man had the power within himself to observe 
the law, would be to destroy his moral responsibi- 
lity altogether. It is little short of absolute trifling 
to maintain that man has not the power to observe 
the precepts of a law made expressly for his observ- 
ance, benefit and happiness. There can no blame 
attach to a man for not doing that which he has 
no power to perform. 

There is a striking resemblance, a perfect analo- 

* Origin of Evil, p. 186, 



90 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

gy, between the divine laws and those of man, so 
far as those principles are concerned which render 
them both, in our estimation, binding and obliga- 
tory. In all human laws, it is necessary they pro- 
ceed from an intelligent cause, and the voluntary 
agency of the power which makes them, and also 
that the laws be such as the persons for whom they 
are enacted have the power to observe. In the di- 
vine law it is necessary for us to assume that it was 
made by a being of infinite wisdom, and who was 
quite at liberty either to make or not to make it ; 
and also that the law is such as we have the power 
to obey. The law of man, if just and reasonable, 
ought to be a transcript of the leading principles of 
the divine law* 

But, besides these considerations, let us prosecute 
these inquiries a little further, and we will find, that 
all our just and correct notions respecting the ex- 
istence, attributes, and moral government of the 
Deity, and, in fact, of the principles of natural 
theology generally, are so closely interwoven and 
identified with the doctrine of free agency r , that it 
seems utterly impossible to separate them even in 
thought. What ideas can we form of the Almighty 
where all free agency is excluded ? Why none but 
those which Spinoza formed, and which the author 






NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 91 

of the " Systems de la Nature" endeavours to in- 
culcate ; where a blind, stern, gloomy, irrevocable 
necessity, is the only deity which their reasonings 
can recognise, the only object of their veneration 
and worship. The very rude notion of Deity 
which prevails amongst the savage and unenlighten- 
ed portion of mankind, consists of this, that he is 
supposed to be endowed with the power of doing 
or not doing as seemeth good in his eyes. When 
we look upon the enchanting aspect and inimitable 
order of the universe ; when we see so much de- 
sign, wisdom, and goodness around us ; when we 
see such a host of animated beings all endowed with 
powers so nicely and wonderfully adapted to their 
several constitutions and ways of life ; and when 
we perceive the different portions of comfort and 
happiness served out to each class agreeable to its 
condition, and the capacities of its nature, we feel 
our bosoms glow with the sentiments of admiration 
and love towards Him who created and governs 
every thing by his power, wisdom, and goodness. 
But we would feel none of these heart-stirring and 
delightful emotions, were we to be convinced that 
every thing we see is the work of an absolute ne- 
cessity, and could not have been otherwise than in 
the state we see them. It is because we conceive 



9^ ILLUSTRATIONS* &C. 

those things we admire to be the works of the Al- 
mighty's will, the fruits of his free and unfettered 
choice, that we bestow upon them the epithets of 
wonderful, skilful, and beneficent. It is to this prin- 
ciple that we owe all our notions of Deity, and de- 
rive all those feelings of amazement, respect, and 
dependence which constitute the essential ingre- 
dients in the natural theology of mankind, in all 
states and conditions. 

There is an argument frequently employed by 
writers on natural religion, in favour of the exist- 
ence of a Divine being, drawn from analogy, which 
is of great force, and which derives all its strength 
from the doctrine of free agency. The argument 
is this, — wherever we see fitness of one thing to 
another, a certain adaptation of means to ends in 
any piece of mechanism or intellectual skill, such 
as a beautiful and convenient building, a fine statue 
or picture, then we are led, by an irresistible prin- 
ciple in our nature, to attribute these effects to de- 
sign, or to a designing and intelligent cause* Ac- 
cordingly, when we see the beauty and grandeur of 
the universe, and the admirable fitness and proprie- 
ty of one thing to another in this magnificent ap- 
paratus, we are led to attribute every thing therein 
contained, and which our eyes behold with wonder 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 93 

and awe, to a Parent mind, an intelligent cause. 
Now this argument is very powerful and conclu- 
sive, and lias, besides, a very extensive and general 
influence over mankind of every rank and condi- 
tion ; yet it owes all its force to the doctrine of 
free agency. What we mean by mind, or intelli- 
gence, or design, as here used, is a certain power, 
which may or may not be exercised, something 
which has, or is supposed to have, a discretionary 
power of exercise contained within itself If we 
fall in with a watch or any other piece of mechan- 
ism in our rambles in the fields, we immediately, 
after examining it, attribute it to be the work of 
some intelligent agent, an agent who had the power 
within himself of either making or not making this 
machine. Were we ever to exclude, in our rea- 
sonings, the notions of freedom in the artist, we 
would never think of applying the terms, skilful, 
intelligent, &c. to the machine, nor would there be 
any analogy, from such an incident as is here sup- 
posed, in which to form an argument in favour of 
a general superintending and intelligent author of 
the universe. 

We believe the Deity to possess certain moral 
attributes, such as goodness, humanity, pity, justice, 
&c. Now the very conception of these moral qua- 



94 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

lities involves the notion of free will, and certainly 
the exercise of them must do so likewise. A ne- 
cessary goodness, a necessary humanity, a neces- 
sary benevolence, or a necessary justice, are words 
without meaning ; or if there be any meaning in 
them, it is only discernible to those whose reason 
and common sense have been bewildered by silly 
and empty sophisms, and whose better affections 
and feelings have been blunted and depraved by a 
long and familiar intercourse with the doctrines and 
arguments of atheists and fatalists. 

What a necessary and indispensable ingredient 
free will is, in the feelings and obligations which 
natural religion inspire and enforce, will appear evi- 
dent by the slightest and most superficial investiga- 
tion into the subject. We regard the Deity as our 
father, our benefactor, who has endowed us with 
all our various powers and faculties ; who every 
moment of our existence upholds us with his power, 
and blesses us with his bounty ; who views us with 
a look of complacency and pity, and who listens 
with affection and kindness to all our supplications ; 
makes allowances for all our imperfections, and for 
the coldness and languor of our devotional feelings 
towards him. Under a deep sense and awful re- 
cognition of his omniscience, we express our grati- 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 9*5 

tude to him, and thankfully acknowledge the im- 
portant and manifold benefits we daily and hourly 
receive at his hands, and to express our gratitude 
by actions as well as words, we desire to know his 
will that we may endeavour to regulate our con- 
duct by its rules and precepts. 

But how inconsistent would all this appear to 
be, if the principle of necessity were applied to the 
conduct of the Deity ; if the spontaneous exercise 
of this free will was set aside ? Why give thanks 
for benefits which could not have been withheld ? 
Why express our gratitude for this tenderness and 
compassion towards us, when these feelings are 
only part of the necessary constitution of His na- 
ture ? Why raise up our hands with a devotional 
feeling for his kindness and affection in listening 
to our complaints, and attending to our wants, 
when he cannot deviate from the eternal laws of 
necessity and fatalism ? In fact, why adore or 
worship at all, seeing that such admiration and 
worship cannot alter what is eternally decreed, or 
change in one tittle what necessity has imposed ? 
The nature and sole essence of all religious worship 
and adoration is, that the Being to whom it is 
addressed has the power to attend to our prayers 
and supplications, and to give us, if he thinks meet, 



96 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

the things we require. Take away free will from 
the Deity, and you take away the foundation of all 
natural and revealed religion. Indeed the word 
religion is altogether unintelligible and unmeaning 
upon any theory either of divine or human ne- 
cessity. 

In heathen mythology, the gods and goddesses 
are represented as possessing the power of free will ; 
and what good or ill they are supposed to dispense 
amongst mankind, is the fruit of their owR.fr ee and 
unbiassed choice. Even the objects which the 
most foolish and debased idolatry has in all ages 
set up to adore and worship, are also endowed, in 
the opinions of their deluded disciples and votaries, 
with spontaneous action ; and no doctrine is con- 
sidered more heterodox and wicked than that these 
idols have not the power of performing or not per- 
forming the various actions which are required of 
them. 

Let us consider the matter ever so closely, we 
will find that we can form to ourselves no rational 
or intelligible conceptions of the divine nature or 
government, of human worship or adoration, nor 
of the ways of providence in general, where free 
agency, either divine or human, or both, are ex- 
cluded. And on this point I fully agree with an 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 97 

eloquent and clever, though on many important 
matters a mistaken writer, who says, " What we 
shall do for ourselves, he (the Almighty) has left 
to the freedom of our elections ; for free-will seems 
so essential to rational beings, that I prfesume we 
cannot conceive any such to be without it, though 
we easily conceive them restrained in the exercise 
of what they will. This plan is that of divine wis- 
dom ; and whatever our imaginations may suggest, 
we know nothing more particular, and indeed 
nothing at all more, of the constitution and order 
of the human system, nor of the dispensations of 
providence, than this." * 

From the few hints and casual remarks which 
Scripture has furnished us with, respecting the na- 
ture of angels and spiritual beings, we are led to 
conclude that they were possessed of the power 
of free-will ; and from being endowed with this 
faculty, they became moral agents. They were 
made capable of transgressing the divine law ; and 
in consequence of being in this probationary state, 
some withstood the influence of evil, and others 
did not. This doctrine is alluded to by Milton, 
when he says — 

* Bolingbroke's Philosophical Works, vol. v. p. 103. 
H 



98 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

" Such I created all th' ethereal powers 
And spirits, both them who stood, and them who fail'd ; 
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell." * 

The same poet endeavours to show that these angels 
could not have performed any act of worship or 
obedience to God, had they not been possessed with 
this power of free-will. Though poets may not, 
perhaps, be considered the best reasoners, or the 
best authorities on such abstract matters, yet the 
sound philosophy contained in these few lines will 
appear manifest to every one who has any know- 
ledge of such doctrines. 

" Not free, what proof could they have giv'n sincere 
Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love, 
Where only what they needs must do, appear' d, 
Not what they would ? What praise could they receive? 
What pleasure I from such obedience paid, 
When will and reason, (reason also is choice) 
Useless and vain, of freedom both dispoiPd, 
Made passive both, and served necessity, 
Notme?"t 

Milton also describes Satan, when he had been 
vanquished and driven out of heaven, and when 
he had summoned all his fallen host to infuse cou- 

* Paradise Lost, book iii. 
f Ibid. 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 99 

rage into them for the future works of mischief 
he and they were to perform ; as relying* solely 
upon the strength of his free-will for the final 
accomplishment of his deeds. He felt the power 
of action within himself strong and vigorous, and 
he cheered the drooping spirits of his less energetic 
companions, by assuring them of complete success 
by dint of that 

" unconquerable will 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And courage never to submit or yield."* 

In the Scripture account of the creation of man, 
and the portion of happiness he enjoyed previously 
to his disobedience, we learn that Adam was en- 
dowed with the power of free agency of the most 
perfect and absolute kind. The Almighty is repre- 
sented by the poet as saying, 

" I made him just, and right, 
Sufficient to have stood, but free to fall." 

We are not left to discover this fact by any long 
or difficult process of reasoning ; but we find it 
deducible from the very simple fact, that God 
prescribed to man a test or trial of his obedience. 

* Paradise Lost, book i. 



100 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

This test must presuppose his power oi free agency, 
and it was from the command delivered to him by 
God, that his moral responsibility was established. 
Theologians tell us, (and theirs is the language of 
Scripture), that before man's fall his will was per- 
fect, and that he was, on this account, morally 
holy and upright ; but that, after his disobedience, 
his will became imperfect and corrupted, and he 
was no longer able to comply, to the full extent, 
with all the rules and precepts contained in the 
divine law. 

In the commandment which was delivered to our 
first parents, we may clearly see, that it was the 
will of the Almighty which alone made it obliga- 
tory upon them to observe it. " Of every tree of 
the garden thou mayest freely eat ; but of the tree 
of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat 
of it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt 
surely die." The promulgation of this decree could 
have nothing, in Adam and Eve's eyes, obligatory 
in it, save the solemn injunction God had laid upon 
them to observe it. To them there could appear 
no necessary or natural connexion between the 
transgression and the punishment ; nor can the de- 
cree be viewed by us even now in any other light 
but that of an arbitrary one, when disjoined from 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 101 

the will of him who ordained it. It surely cannot 
be pretended that there is here any fitnesses of 
things, any immutable and eternal relations, which 
could not have been altered, even by the Deity 
himself. The whole value of the decree, its moral 
obligation, its sacredness, and vast importance, are 
solely resolvable into the will of God who ordain- 
ed it. 

It may also be worthy of remark, in passing here, 
that the conduct of Adam after his transgression is 
strikingly illustrative of the connexion between the 
free-will of man, and the censure or approbation 
we bestow upon his moral actions. He put forth 
an apology for his having trampled upon the divine 
commands, by stating that he had been subjected 
to severe trial and temptation, and that it had in 
some measure been against his will that he had 
committed the offence. " The woman whom thou 
gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and 
I did eat :" language evidently declaratory that he 
did not conceive he was so guilty as Eve was ; and 
in consequence of the temptation to which she had 
subjected him, he hoped to find more mercy and 
consideration from the Deity. 

In looking at the Scriptures as a whole, and in 
attending to their general bearing and import 



102 ILLUSTRATIONS,^ &C. 

we must come to the conclusion, that they con- 
tain the divine rules for men's moral government 
while here on earth, and that he has within himself 
the power, to a considerable extent, of observing 
these divine rules and precepts. This conclusion is 
so much in unison with the dictates of reason and 
common sense, that we cannot refuse our assent to 
it ; and with regard to the declarations of Scripture 
on this point, they are so numerous, so decided, and 
so unreservedly and plainly laid down, that it is 
said, " that he who runs may read, and a wayfaring 
man, though a stranger, cannot err." 

If we consider the moral government of the 
Deity as a rational and equitable one, we must as- 
sume that he would not have commanded men to 
perform what they were not, from their constitu- 
tion, able to do. The Scriptures are full of moral 
precepts, with express sanctions of rewards and 
punishments to them ; and the Almighty expostu- 
lates with us in the most earnest and sympathetic 
manner, to practise the various duties and com- 
mands which he has delivered to us for our especial 
guidance and happiness. God frequently tells us 
that he is not willing that any man should perish ; 
and in hundreds of instances, tells us in plain and 
direct language, that if destruction come upon us, 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 103 

It will lie at our own door, for want of the proper 
exercise of our own powers. 

It would be easy to fill a volume with quotations 
from the sacred writings, wherein man's moral abi- 
lity to do what is commanded of him is uncondi- 
tionally recognised ; but this course will not be ne- 
cessary here. Every person who pays even com- 
mon attention to the religious duties and opinions 
of a Christian country, is well acquainted with in- 
numerable passages which have this import. Be- 
sides, what has been advanced in favour of natural 
religion from the influence of free-will, may with 
equal force and propriety be advanced in favour of 
revealed religion. If the former suffer from notions 
of necessity and fatalism, and seem incompatible 
with any modification of these doctrines, so must 
the latter ; they both stand upon the same ground ; 
and what exercises a favourable influence over the 
one, must also exercise a favourable influence over 
the other. 

I shall, however, just notice two facts in Scrip- 
ture, which illustrate the power of free-will. The 
first is, that striking part of Scripture where it is 
related that David, being driven by hunger, was 
compelled to take the shew or holy bread, to satis- 
fy the cravings of nature. This act, under ordi- 



104 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

nary circumstances, would have amounted to sacri- 
lege, one of the most heinous crimes which a man 
can commit. It is a crime committed against God 
himself, and is therefore worthy of the severest 
punishment. Yet we are told that David was not 
considered as acting a criminal part Jby this deed, 
seeing that he was compelled by necessity to per- 
form it. We here see the power which is attribut- 
ed to the will. David is not considered, when un- 
der the pinching effects of hunger, to be a moral 
agent, as his will was under constraint from the 
privations he endured. There was no choice for 
him ; he was either to satisfy his hunger with the 
sacred bread, or perish. If we were to suppose the 
contrary, that he had it in his power, without any 
great personal danger or injury, either to do or not 
to do without this bread ; then, instead of being 
blameless, he would be considered guilty of a hein- 
ous crime against the Almighty. The second fact 
is that contained in the passage in the book of Jo- 
nah, respecting the destruction of the city of Nine- 
veh. The language is very expressive of the con- 
nexion between just punishment and voluntary 
agency. " And shall not I spare Nineveh, that 
great city, wherein are more than six score thou- 
sand persons that cannot discern between their 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 105 

right hand and their left ; and also much cattle."* 
The sole reason assigned here for not destroying- 
the inhabitants of this city was, that they knew not 
right from wrong ; they were in fact not moral 
agents. 

Many of the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish 
religion must Jiave been considered binding and 
obligatory upon them, from no other reason than 
that they were appointed and commanded to be ob- 
served by the will of the Almighty. The sacri- 
ficing of bulls and of goats, and the sprinkling of 
the ashes of an heifer, could not abstractly or of 
themselves be considered in the light of moral du- 
ties ; they only became invested with the force of 
such, from the sole circumstance that they emanat- 
ed from the will of the Most High. And though 
these rites and ceremonies of the Jewish church be 
considered as types and figures of other subsequent 
events, they are types and figures to us, and were 
not to the Jews who then observed them ; so that 
this circumstance does not alter the abstract nature 
of the Jewish ritual, or make that a positive moral 
duty which was only clothed with the attributes of 
moral obligation, from having been constituted the 
tvill or law of God. 

* Jonah iv. 10. 



106 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

Looking at the existence of the Levitical law in 
all its bearings, it strikingly points out to us how- 
certain things become invested with moral obliga- 
tion solely from having been commanded by the 
Deity. Those who contend for the eternal and 
immutable nature of moral truths (using the words 
in their absolute sense, as meaning that these truths 
were coeval with God himself, and independent of 
his will), must be greatly puzzled to show how it 
happened, that this law had all the force of a moral 
law amongst the people for whom it was promul- 
gated, without possessing any of those inherent re- 
lations or characteristic features which distinguish 
what we usually term moral actions, sentiments, 
and opinions. The Jewish people were, for exam- 
ple, enjoined to abstain from using the flesh of cer- 
tain animals for food, though the flesh of these ani- 
mals was not by any means considered in itself of 
a disagreeable or noxious nature. Though this 
command had all the force of a moral precept, it 
will not, I apprehend, be maintained, that there 
was any natural fitness, — any thing agreeable or 
conformable to the nature of things in obeying this 
part of the Mosaic ritual, more than what the mere 
command of the Almighty conferred upon it. If 
there were an eternal moral fitness in the Jewish 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION* 107 

nation abstaining from eating the flesh of certain 
animals, and in observing other ceremonial rights 
and privileges at the time these things were enjoined , 
upon them by the Deity himself, then this fitness, 
this immutable moral truth, must exist in these 
actions yet ; and, consequently, those laws of the 
Jewish ritual must be as obligatory and binding 
upon us now, as they were upon the Israelites at 
the time of their promulgation, or at any subsequent 
period of their history. If these laws are now 
destitute of moral obligation and force, then what 
becomes of the eternal nature of moral distinctions ; 
and what circumstance was it which conferred upon 
these rites and ceremonies that moral weight and 
influence which they formerly possessed, and of 
which they are now deprived ? The true answer 
to this question is, that these laws, rites, and cere- 
monies were considered holy, fit, and reasonable, 
merely because they were commanded by the Al- 
mighty ; they were his will, and from this cause, 
and from this alone, was their moral obligation de- 
rived. 

But I am fully aware that it may be objected to 
me here, that there are many who hold very dif- 
ferent opinions as to the nature of the divine law, 
as manifested in the constitution of nature, and the 



108 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

declarations of Scripture ; and also as to man's 
capability of observing" all or any part of the pre- 
cepts contained in these laws. I am very far from 
thinking that those who hold the doctrine of pre- 
destination and sovereign grace, have little or no 
countenance from reason and Scripture ; quite the 
reverse. With respect to the arguments which 
may be urged in favour of these views, from 
mere abstract reasoning, I always do think them of 
a very cogent and powerful nature. When we ad- 
mit the existence of a supreme and intelligent go- 
vernor of the universe, we must also admit his at- 
tribute of omniscience, or that he has the power to 
foresee all events, past, present, and future. In- 
deed we cannot form any conceptions of the Deity 
without this attribute of foreknowing all events. 
Now here is a principle, possessing all the force, 
when properly stated, of intuitive suggestion ; but 
which is, nevertheless, contrary to some of our 
most familiar notions. But the Calvinist is justly 
entitled to this principle, on which he may safely 
rest his whole system ; being well assured that he 
is completely sheltered from any logical refutation. 
Many systems and views, both in morals and reli- 
gion, are maintained upon a more slender founda- 
tion than that of Predestinarianism ; and it is, 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 109 

therefore, far from right or candid to say, with 
some, that the religious theory in question is vi- 
sionary, inconsistent, unreasonable, and unscrip- 
tural. 

But at the same time I beg to differ from this 
system, as far as its principles may be supposed to 
have a bearing upon theoretical and practical mo- 
rality, and I do so principally upon two grounds, 
which I shall content myself with merely stating, 
as briefly as possible, without going at any length 
into the general question. First, then, predestina- 
tion is contrary to man's moral agency ; and, se- 
condly, the leading and fundamental principle of 
the system is the same as that of necessity, or fate, 
and is liable to the same objections. 

In regard to the first objection, I will merely re- 
mark, that those who know any thing about the 
real merits of the controversy between the predes- 
tinarians and their antagonists, know that the 
principal argument brought forward by the latter 
against the system of the former, is, that man's 
moral agency, and his consequent responsibility, 
cannot be maintained on the predestinarian hypo- 
thesis. All candid advocates for election allow 
that this is a formidable objection, and they qua- 
lifvingly admit its force by calling it a difficulty. 



110 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

Now, what is meant by a difficulty ? Do we mean 
by this expression that the reconciling of the free 
will of men with the prescience of God is a diffi- 
culty to some men and not to others ? Has any 
one, no matter what portion of genius or learning 
he may have brought to the task, ever overcome 
this difficulty? All candid predestinarians will 
answer this in the negative. On the other hand, 
it must be admitted, that there are many very 
weighty objections on the opposite side of the 
question ; so that the only alternative that is left 
us, is a choice of difficulties. Any attempt to re- 
concile the two doctrines — the prescience of God, 
and the free-will of man — upon the principles of 
abstract reasoning, may be safely pronounced to be 
quite visionary and futile. 

In the second place, I consider the doctrine of 
predestination as the same in principle, so far as 
the human will is concerned, as the doctrine of 
what is termed philosophical necessity, and liable 
to all the objections, on the score of speculative 
morality, to which that doctrine is exposed. It is 
true that these two doctrines may differ widely in 
several points of view; as, for example, some of 
the advocates of necessity may say, that in their 
scheme they exclude a supreme and intelligent 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. Ill 

cause of things, and that their necessity is a gene- 
ral one, including and pervading the whole system 
of nature. The predestinarian, on the other hand, 
may say, he admits the existence of a wise gover- 
nor of the world, in whose eternal counsels and 
fore-knowledge the conduct and condition of us, 
his children, were fixed and preordained before 
the world was. Now these two doctrines differ 
considerably, but there is no difference between 
them in respect to the human will ; for it is com- 
pletely under control in both systems ; and this is 
the only point for our consideration here- These 
two doctrines, however dissimilar they may be in 
other respects, must, upon this ground, be com- 
pletely identified. 

But it may be remarked, by way of conclusion 
to this chapter, that it does not materially affect 
the principles and reasonings laid down in this 
Essay, whether the predestinarian theory be right 
or wrong ; for upon the supposition that it is well- 
founded, it will go to establish this point — that 
though our wills and all our actions are under the 
Almighty's sovereign control, yet He is free to 
act in all matters which appertains to man's pre- 
sent conduct and future expectations ; that it is 
solely upon the act of Wis free-will or free-grace 



112 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

that they rest their hopes of happiness beyond the 
grave. Hence, then, it is maintained, that our no- 
tions of the rectitude of the moral government of 
the Deity, all ideas of Christian duty and obe- 
dience, and the stability and permanency of our 
future expectations, are founded upon the doctrine 
of Divine free agency ; a position, illustrative, as 
far as it goes, of the principles contained in this 
Essay, Besides, it may be remarked, that the per- 
petual effort, (whether a successful one, is a diffe- 
rent question) which has so commonly been made 
by writers on election, to show that their system 
did not militate against the common notions of 
man's moral agency, but, on the contrary, that 
these notions were perfectly reconcilable with the 
doctrine of election, may be considered as tanta- 
mount to an unconditional declaration, that our 
notions of morality are inseparable from the opi- 
nions we form to ourselves of moralfree-will. 



113 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED— AN EXAMINATION 
OF THE VIEWS OF SEVERAL EMINENT WRITERS ON 
THE FREE-WILL OF THE DEITY. 



In the writings of Leibnitz and Jonathan Edwards, 
though zealous disciples of the necessarian scheme, 
we will find, that when they come to apply their 
principles to the doctrines of natural and revealed 
religion, they illustrate these principles with so 
many qualifications and reservations, that it be- 
comes not only difficult to say what opinions they 
really do hold on necessary influence when applied 
to religious subjects ; but they lay themselves open 
to inferences favourable to the opposite side of the 
controversy. From the general line of argument 
which they both follow, it would seem that they 
are very desirous to avoid the doctrine of neces- 

i 



114 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

sity in its absolute sense, as it appeared to them 
hostile to all our just notions of Deity, and of 
moral obligation. Leibnitz says that men are in- 
fluenced in their actions by representations of good 
and evil, certainly and infallibly, but not neces- 
sarily ; and that the Deity was infallibly but not 
necessarily induced to create the world by his wis- 
dom and goodness, and that this act of creation 
was perfect in all its parts, and the result of the 
most perfect and complete liberty of action.* He 
perceives clearly that necessity, in its common ac- 
ceptation, is entirely at variance with right concep- 
tions of the divine nature and attributes ; and he 
labours hard to avoid the plain, but to him dis- 

* " Cela pose, Ton voit comment nous pouvons dire avec plusieurs 
Philosophes et Theologiens celebres, que la substance qui pense est 
portee a sa resolution par la representation prevalente du bien ou 
du mal, et cela certainement et infailliblement, mais non pas neces- 
sairement : c'est a dire, par des raisons qui I'inclinent sans necessiter. 
C'est pourquoi les futures contingens, prevu et en aux-m^mes et par 
leurs raisons, demeurent contingens ; et Dieu a e'te porte infaillible- 
ment par sa sagesse et par sa bonte a creer le monde par sa puissance, 
et a lui donner la meilleur forme possible ; mais il n'y etoit point 
porte necessairement ; et le tout s'est posse sans aucune diminution 
de sa liberte parfaite et souveraine. Et sans consideration que nous 
Tenons de faire, je ne sais s'il seroit aise de resoudre le noeud Gordien 
de la contingence et de la liberte." Eemarques stir le Livre de V Orig. 
du Mal 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 115 

agreeable inference, which follows so clearly from 
his positions. Hence the various subtile and 
verbal distinctions, and qualifications, which clog 
his arguments on this subject. Viewing what he 
says in the most candid and dispassionate frame of 
mind, his language is so indefinite and equivocal, 
that it appears in many places to be tantamount to 
a virtual renunciation of his own professed prin- 
ciples. 

The same remarks that are here made on Mr. 
Leibnitz, equally apply to the writings of Dr. Jo- 
nathan Edwards, on the nature of the Divine will. 
I take the following words as containing the sub- 
stance of his remarks on this subject. " The so- 
vereignty of God is his ability and authority to do 
whatever pleases him ; whereby 4 He doeth accord- 
ing to his will in the armies of heaven and amongst 
the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his 
hand, or say unto him, what doest thou/ The 
following things belong to the sovereignty of God, 
viz. (1.) Supreme, universal, and infinite power y 
whereby he is able to do what he pleases, without 
control, without any confinement of that power, 
without any subjection, in the least measure, to 
any other power ; and so, without any hinderance 
or restraint, that it should be either impossible or 



116 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

at all difficult for him to accomplish his will ; and 
without any dependence of his power, on any other 
power, from whence it should be derived, or which 
it would stand in any need of ; so far from this y 
that all other power is derived from him, and is ab- 
solutely dependent upon him. (2.) That he has su- 
preme authority / absolute and most perfect right to 
do what he wills, without subjection to any superior, 
or any derivation of authority from any other, or li- 
mitation by any distinct independent authority, either 
superior, equal, or inferior ; he being the head of all 
dominion, and fountain of all authority, and also 
without restraint by any obligation, implying either 
subjection, derivation, or dependence, or proper li- 
mitation. (3.) Thus his will is supreme, underived, 
and independent of any thing without himself ; be- 
ing in every thing determined by his own counsel, 
having no other rule but his own wisdom ; his 
will not being subject to, or restrained by the will 
of any other, and other wills being perfectly subject 
to his. (4.) That his wisdom, which determines 
his will, is supreme, perfect, underived, self-suffi- 
cient, and independent ; so that it may be said, as 
in Isaiah xl. 14, ' With whom took he counsel ? 
and who instructed him and taught him the path 
of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 117 

showed him the way of understanding ?' There is 
no other divine sovereignty but this, and this is 
properly absolute sovereignty : no other is desire- 
able, nor would any other be honourable or happy ; 
and indeed there is no other conceivable or pos- 
sible. It is the glory and greatness of the Divine 
sovereign, that God's will is determined by his 
own infinite all-sufficient wisdom in every thing ; 
and in nothing at all is it either directed by any 
inferior wisdom, or by no wisdom, whereby it 
would become senseless arbitrariness, determining 
and acting without reason, design, or end."* 

From this passage we may observe that it is ex- 
plicitly laid down here that any thing like con- 
straint, influence, or power, exercised over the 
divine nature, would be totally destructive of its 
essence. This declaration is sufficient to show that 
our notions of necessary connexion, or depen- 
dence, are hostile to correct conceptions of the 
divine government. But the principal thing wor- 
thy of consideration here, and which bears upon 
the doctrine immediately under notice, is that 
which affirms that the infinite wisdom of God re- 
gulates, acts upon, impels, disposes, and rules his 

* On the Freedom of the Will, part iv. sect. 7. 



118 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

infinite will. The Doctor thought that by re- 
moving the divine will from any influence external 
to the Deity, and by placing that influence within 
himself, he was setting the question out of the 
reach of all cavil ; but in this, I think, he was mis- 
taken, for the difficulties are only taken from one 
place and set down in another, How does this 
attribute of wisdom act upon the will ? Does this 
infinite wisdom contain within itself the principle 
of its own movements ? Wisdom in the divine Be- 
ing, as well as amongst us, his finite creatures, 
must mean something which is done ; some parti- 
cular action or motion, directed to some particular 
end, arid productive of some particular conse- 
quence, or consequences ; but if it moved of itself, 
it must have moved, or acted upon, or influenced 
another thing without any cause, end, purpose, 
motive, or object, which, according to the principle 
running through the whole of Dr. Edwards' rea- 
sonings on the freedom of the will, must be im- 
possible and absurd. The divine will is here re- 
presented as an entirely passive thing, unable of 
itself to do any thing without being moved, or set 
in motion by infinite wisdom ; but in what man- 
ner, or by what causes this attribute of infinite 
wisdom itself is directed or brought into action, 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 119 

we are not informed. This omission, this difficul- 
ty, is calculated to teach us, that we cannot form 
to ourselves consistent or intelligible notions of the 
divine nature, without supposing, or taking for 
granted, a degree of spontaneity in the Deity. 
If we wish to reason rationally on his attributes, 
we must invest one of these attributes with spon- 
taneous motion, to guide, direct, move, or call 
into action the rest ; and this underived power 
may, for any thing which can be advanced to the 
contrary, be as properly vested in the will, as in 
any other attribute. It must always be borne in 
mind, that the same arguments drawn from the dif- 
ficulty of conceiving how the human will can act 
without motives, present themselves when we main- 
tain that the infinite wisdom of the Deity is exer- 
cised without any motive foreign to its own nature. 
The objections in both cases are founded upon the 
same principle, and must stand or fall together. 

In the discussions between Leibnitz and Dr. 
Clarke on liberty and necessity, we find the Doctor 
maintaining that freedom of action in the divine 
mind is indispensably requisite to enable us to 
form correct ideas of the Deity, and of his moral 
government. He says — " 'Tis very true that no- 
thing is, without a sufficient reason why it is, 



120 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

and why it is thus rather than otherwise. And, 
therefore, where there is no cause, there can be 
no effect. But this sufficient reason is ofttimes no 
other than the mere will of God. For instance, — 
why this particular system of matter should be 
created in one particular place, when — (all place 
being absolutely indifferent to all matter) — it would 
have been exactly the same thing vice versa, supposing 
the two systems (or the particles) of matter to be 
alike, there can be no other reason but the mere 
will of God, which, if it could in no case act 
without a predetermining cause, any more than a 
balance can move without a preponderating weight, 
this would tend to take away all power of choos- 
ing, and to introduce fatality" Leibnitz replies to 
Dr. Clarke, but says not a single word against what 
is here stated. 

The principal arguments against the doctrine that 
morality is founded upon the will of God, are the 
following. 

1st, This doctrine takes it for granted that what 
is now denominated virtue or merit, and vice or 
demerit, became such purely and solely from an 
act of the divine will ; and if this exercise of 
the will of the Deity had not taken place, there 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 121 

would not have been any such things as virtue or 
vice — merit or demerit, If the world had existed 
either from chance or necessity, and in the state 
and condition we now see it, then virtue and vice 
would have possessed, relatively to each other, an 
indifferent, if not a common nature. What was 
praiseworthy, honest, and conducive to our happi- 
ness, would have had then no distinctive character 
from what was immoral, dishonest, and destructive 
of our peace. In founding the existence and na- 
ture of virtue and vice upon the pure will and 
pleasure of the Almighty, we stamp both with 
equal authority, and confound the qualities of 
each. 

2d, If the mere act of the will of the Almighty, 
abstractly considered, made or created that which 
we call virtue, and rendered it obligatory upon us 
because, and only because, it was the act of his 
will, then vice, which is in its nature and effects 
quite opposite from virtue, being likewise created 
and called into operation by this selfsame act of 
the will, must be considered as possessing a power 
of obligation upon us every way equal with virtue 
itself, and that wickedness and folly became as ex- 
cellent in their natures and effects as goodness and 
wisdom, seeing that, if the will made virtue, and 



122 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

vice owed its nature and effects to the same will, 
then they must both be, in every respect, alike. 

3d, The principle which maintains that virtue 
and vice owed their existence and distinctive cha- 
racter to the will of God, presupposes that before 
the exercise of the will, virtue and vice had no- 
thing different in their natures, but were viewed, 
as it were, by the eye of the Almighty as one and 
the same, and therefore there would seem to have 
been no motive or inducement in the Almighty to 
create a difference, or give a preference to virtue 
more than to vice. 

4th, The Almighty might, if he had chosen, have 
ordained that man should rebel against him, and not 
obey him, should hate and not love him, and might 
have violated with benefit and pleasure the whole 
ten commandments. 

5th, The doctrine now under consideration is 
inconsistent with the attribute of the Deity which 
we call omniscient. Every thing which has been 
created was seen from eternity, or existed, as it 
were, in the divine mind; for the past, the present, 
and the future, are but as one to him. All moral 
natures, moral relations, and moral consequences, 
must have been, with other things in the divine 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 123 

mind, prior to their creation ; that is, must have 
existed in the same manner as figurative represen- 
tations of material or moral objects may exist in 
our own minds, perfect in all their parts and rela- 
tions ; such, for example, as a landscape, or a mo- 
ral being endowed with passions, virtues, or vices, 
such as are commonly described by us in works of 
fiction. 

6th, The scheme that morality depends upon 
the will of God, " not only involves in it, that 
mankind, with all their impiety, injustice, cruelty, 
oppressions, wars, and butcheries, are in their na- 
ture equally amiable and excellent as angels, with 
all their truth and benevolence, but also, that the 
character of fiends is in itself, and independently 
of the fact that God chose it should be other- 
wise, just as lovely, excellent, and praiseworthy, 
as that of angels. If then God had willed the 
character which Satan adopted and sustains to be 
moral excellence, and that which Gabriel sustains 
to be moral worthlessness, these two beings con- 
tinuing in every other respect the same, would 
have interchanged their characters — Satan would 
have become entirely lovely, and Gabriel detest- 
able — must not he who can believe this doctrine, 
as easily believe that, if God had willed it, two and 



124 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

two would have become five ? Is it at all easier 
to believe that truth and falsehood can interchange 
their natures, than that a square and a circle can 
interchange theirs ?" 

7th, We might inquire what is the nature of the 
will of God ? Does that will become good, holy 
and just, merely because that God willed it should 
be such ; or, is that will excellent in its own na- 
ture, independently of any exercise of Almighty 
volition ? If we maintain that the will of God is 
not excellent in its own nature, but became such 
by an act of his will, then it clearly follows that 
" if God had been a being equally malevolent, and 
by an act of his will had determined that his cha- 
racter should be infinitely excellent, it would of 
course have become infinitely excellent, and he 
himself would have deserved to be loved, praised, 
and glorified for his infinite malice, cruelty, and op- 
pression, just as he now does for his infinite good- 
ness, truth, faithfulness and mercy. According to 
this scheme, therefore, there is no original moral 
difference between the characters of an infinitely 
malevolent being, and an infinitely benevolent one ; 
because this difference depends on a mere act of 
will, and not at all on the respective natures of 
the things themselves. That a malevolent being 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 125 

would have made this determination, there is no 
more reason to doubt, than that it would be made 
by a benevolent being- ; for it cannot be doubted 
that a malevolent being would have entirely loved 
and honoured himself. The question whether God 
is a benevolent or malevolent being, seems there- 
fore to be nugatory, for all our inquiries concern- 
ing the subject, which have any practical impor- 
tance, terminate in this single question, — What has 
God chosen ?"* 

8th, It is observed by a very learned and inge- 
nious writer, who has devoted a good deal of at- 
tention to this subject, but whose language is open 
to very opposite interpretations, that " the law of 
nature is infinitely superior to all authority of men, 
and independent upon it, so its obligation, pri- 
marily and originally, is antecedent also even to 
this consideration of its being the positive will or 
command of God himself. For, as the addition of 
certain numbers necessarily produces a certain 
sum, and certain geometrical or mechanical opera- 
tions give a constant and unalterable solution of 
certain problems or propositions, so in moral mat- 

* See these arguments treated more fully in D wight's System of 
theology, vol. iii. p. 427. 



126 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

ters there are certain necessary and unalterable re- 
spects or relations of things, which have not their 
original from arbitrary and positive constitution, 
but are of eternal necessity in their own nature. 
As in matters of sense, the reason why a thing is 
visible, is not because it is seen, but it is therefore 
seen because it is visible — so in matters of natural 
reason and morality, that which is holy and good, 
is not therefore holy and good because it is com- 
manded to be done, but is therefore commanded of 
God because it is holy and good. The existence 
indeed of the things themselves whose proportions 
and relations we consider, depends entirely on the 
mere arbitrary will and good pleasure of God y 
who can create things when he thinks fit. But 
when things are created, and so long as it pleases 
God to continue them in being, their proportions* 
which are abstractly of eternal necessity r , are also 
in the things themselves absolutely unalterable"* 

It would be acting an unfair and disingenuous 
part, not to allow that these objections possess 
great force ; indeed some of them may be said to 
be entirely unanswerable. But in making this 

* Dr. Clarke's Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, 
p. 216. 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 127 

concession, we need not be prevented from stating 
some considerations of a directly opposite nature, 
which, if they are not calculated to produce abso- 
lute conviction, will, at least, induce us to see 
that this important, but rather abstruse and intri- 
cate question, has two different aspects in which it 
may be viewed. 

1. The whole of the arguments which have just 
now been stated against the principles of Arch- 
bishop King's system, hinge upon this assumption, 
and it is altogether a futile and gratuitous one : — 
that we, finite and imperfect creatures, can have an 
adequate and full conception of the nature and at- 
tributes of the Deity ; of his creative power, the 
nature of his moral constitution, and of the final 
ends or purposes for which he has made the uni- 
verse, together with us his feeble and dependent 
creatures. 

2. But, waving this objection, which is of great 
weight, and which must suggest itself to every 
candid and reverential mind, at the very threshold 
of this inquiry, let us apply our reasoning to the 
subject, and we will see that logical difficulties, as 
numerous, and seemingly insurmountable, will be 
found in the moral theory, — that the law of moral- 
ity is not obligatory upon us from the considera- 
tion of its being the express will of God, 



128 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

3. In saying* that the Deity could have no motive 
to create virtue or vice, or to give a preference to 
the former or to the latter, is to talk after the man- 
ner of men ; it is to maintain that God is influenc- 
ed by something exterior to, or independent of, 
himself ; for it must always be held in remembrance 
that we can attach no idea to the word motive, but 
that of foreign influence or force upon the being to 
whom the motive is directed. If the motive, in 
this instance, be held to be part of the divine na- 
ture, coeval in its existence with his other attri- 
butes ; then we may again ask, in what manner, 
and at what time did this motive begin to mani- 
fest itself. If it existed from all eternity, it must 
have exercised its power from all eternity also. 
But an eternal motive is an absurdity. A motive 
or inducement is something arising out of the 
circumstances of the case. To say that a motive 
always existed, seems nothing short of a contradic- 
tion ; for the word motive invariably means some- 
thing arising out of something else ; and to sup- 
pose an infinite series of motives, is preposterous 
in the extreme, and when pushed to its utmost 
limits, is alike destructive to the existence of matter r 
and of the Deity himself. 

4. Besides these considerations, it may be observed* 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 129 

that an eternal, self-created, and infinitely wise and 
powerful being*, must, if we can strain our feeble 
imaginations to grasp at even a faint conception of 
the matter, be supposed to be acted upon only by a 
motive as eternal, self-created, and infinitely as 
powerful as himself. 

5. If a divine motive, if we may so term it, was 
indispensably necessary to stamp the law of God 
with moral validity, then this is as much as to say 
that the obligatory nature of this law owed its sole 
existence not only to this something, which we 
term a motive, which we must conceive to be ex- 
ternal to, and independent of, the Deity himself ; 
but of which something, we do not profess to have 
the smallest conception, and which we consequently 
have not been able at any time to designate by any 
appellation whatever. 

6. If the law of morality be anterior to, or con- 
sidered as coeval in point of existence with the 
Deity himself; then this law becomes obligatory 
upon us. — We obey its injunctions, not from any 
considerations of its being his law, or of his crea- 
tion, but solely on account of its being anterior to, 
or coeval in point of duration with, himself. 

7. To say that the duties and obligations of 
morality are eternal, and that the Deity is obliged 

K 



130 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

or necessitated to regulate himself by this eternal 
law, then this is to place this law above himself, 
and to make him entirely dependent upon it. This 
supposition is also completely at variance with all 
our notions, whether philosophical or popular, 
which we have of law in general ; for we cannot 
maintain that any law can have an existence ante- 
rior to, or coeval with, the lawgiver, or framer of 
the law. 

8. If the distinctions between virtue and vice be 
of the same nature as the truth or falsehood of 
mathematical axioms and propositions, and if it be 
true, as affirmed, that the Almighty could not alter 
the nature of even the simplest truth in the latter 
branch of human knowledge ; then we are led to 
infer that mathematical evidence is completely inde- 
pendent of his power, and incapable of receiving 
any alteration or modification from his omnipo- 
tence. 

9. If we grant that the nature of mathematical 
evidence could not be affected by the Almighty's 
power, it is but fair to infer that all other kinds of 
truth must also partake of the same nature — that 
is, be independent of the power and will of God ; 
and, as we find from experience that the laws of 
matter and motion, by which the whole universe is 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 131 

regulated and upheld, are possessed of the same 
degree of evidence as that which is ascribed to 
mathematics ; then we must come to the conclusion, 
that the universe, as at present constituted, could 
not have been constituted otherwise ; and that the 
principles by which the movements of great masses 
of matter are regulated, as well as the principles 
which bind together the smallest particles or atoms, 
must have existed from all eternity. 

10. As mathematical truths, and indeed all kinds 
of truths, are perceived by the mind of man, and 
bear a certain fixed relation to it ; it does not, in 
my humble opinion, appear an unwarrantable stretch 
of assertion, to maintain that it might have pleased 
the Almighty, and that it was within his power, to 
have altered the relative connexion, or system of 
laws which exist between truth in general, and our 
minds. At any rate, those who maintain that the 
Almighty had it not in his power to alter the na- 
ture of mathematical evidence, must also in consis- 
tency maintain, that our minds, by which that truth 
is perceived, and to which it must be considered to 
bear a certain and fixed relation, could not have 
been otherwise made than we find them to be. 
And, moreover, it may also be remarked, that as 
there is a certain connexion subsisting between the 



132 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

nature and operations of our minds, and the 
nature and operations of our bodies ; it is but fair 
to presume, that if our minds could not have been 
altered from what they now are, neither could our 
bodies, without destroying that concord and mutual 
harmony of action, which, experience teaches us, 
do at present subsist between them. With what- 
ever difficulties the position may be attended, there 
are few persons, I apprehend, who would not 
readily concede that both our minds and bodies 
might have been very differently constituted from 
what they are, if it had so pleased the will of the 
Almighty to have done so. 

11. If all moral truths, and truths relating to 
other branches of human knowledge, be affirmed 
to be not independent of the will of the Almighty 
in the absolute meaning of the phrase, but only 
form part of his nature or essence, then this view 
of the matter is precisely the same as that of Spino- 
za — being founded upon the same principle, and 
differing only in forms and modes of expression. 

12. The arguments which are founded upon an 
analogy between the way in which the Almighty 
might be conceived to have seen things, before they 
were actually created, and imaginary representa- 
tions of material objects of the mind's conception, 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 133 

such as a plan of a house, a landscape, &c. are not 
perfect and complete, and do not in any conceiv- 
able manner seem capable of being applied to the 
Deity. We obtain our imaginary representations 
from a knowledge of realities, but in the case of the 
Deity, as here supposed, the moral and physical 
truths, and their various relations, are represented 
as having an existence before any thing material or 
substantial was created. This consideration, trifl- 
ing as it may at first sight appear to many, does, in 
my humble conception, destroy at once the whole 
argument on this point. 

13. It would be easy to push these inquiries to 
a greater length, but probably at the expense of 
appearing dry and tedious to the generality of 
readers. On every side in which this interesting 
question — whether our moral and religious obli- 
gations centre in the will of God, or they do not ? 
I think the preponderance of rational evidence is 
in favour of the position that the will of God must 
be the reason why his commands become invested 
with an obligatory character. There can no possi- 
ble harm attend the belief of the complete and ab- 
solute free-will of the Deity ; on the contrary, the 
opposite hypothesis, that he is not free to act in all 
things, is full of danger, and must lead, by fair and 



134 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

legitimate inference, to downright atheism. There 
is no middle course to steer. We cannot maintain 
the Almighty to be a necessary Being in some mat- 
ters, and not in others, without running into abso- 
lute absurdity and confusion. 

14. The whole of natural and revealed religion 
may be considered as consisting of two kinds of 
precepts or commands : the one moral, and the 
other positive. The former of which we do by 
natural reason see the fitness and propriety ; but 
the fitness of the latter we do not perceive so 
clearly, and they become obligatory upon us, solely 
from being the positive commands of the Deity. 
Many of the most important doctrines of revelation 
become objects of faith and principles of action, 
not on account of any perceivable fitness or con- 
gruity in themselves, but solely because they are 
ordained from heaven. The doctrine of the Trinity, 
the incarnation of Christ, the resurrection of the 
body, and a day of final judgment, are matters of 
importance, and objects of interest, not from their 
appearing Jit or reasonable in their own natures, 
abstractly considered, but purely because we are 
told, that God has ivilled these things. I think it 
is a grievous mistake to imagine that there is any 
resemblance between the truth of these doctrines, 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 135 

and the truth of mathematics ; for, in order that 
we should be able to perceive the fitness or pro- 
priety of these doctrines, it would be necessary we 
should be well and thoroughly acquainted with 
the whole of the moral government of the Deity. 
To talk of the fitness or reasonableness of such 
doctrines, in the same confident and decisive man- 
ner as we talk of mathematical relations, it would 
be necessary we should know just as much as the 
Deity himself. The only foundation, therefore, for 
the obligatory nature of his positive commands, of 
which we can know any thing, is, that they are 
simply the result of his will and pleasure. 

15. It may also, I think, be fairly maintained, 
that even the moral precepts of the Almighty do 
not stand upon any different ground from his pos- 
sitive commands ; nor does there appear to be, at 
bottom, any arguments for referring the latter to 
the express will of God, which do not equally, and 
with the same force, apply to the former. Look- 
ing, for example, at the nature of the ten command- 
ments, there is nothing in them, abstractly con- 
sidered, — when viewed apart from the nature of 
man, and the constitution of the social state — to 
which they refer, that* can induce us to believe that 
the connexion which subsists between their per- 



136 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

formance or non-performance, and happiness and 
comfort, misery and disorder, is of an eternal and 
immutable description, and is unsusceptible of any 
modification from the will or power of the Al- 
mighty. We might easily imagine that society 
might have been so constituted, that, going into our 
neighbour's house and taking away his goods, might 
have been considered quite a harmless action, and 
not denominated as the heinous crime of theft. 
Why the connexion was at first established, and 
still exists between virtue and happiness, vice and 
misery, no other account can be given, than that it 
has so pleased God to establish and uphold this con- 
nexion ; and all the arguments which have, at vari- 
ous times, been brought forward in support of the 
doctrines of natural religion, and the obligations 
of morality, are founded, not upon what is conceiv- 
ed by us to be impossible to be constituted other- 
wise ; but upon what we perceive is constituted : 
not upon abstract speculations on the limited powers 
of the Deity, but solely on the ground that he has 
chosen to frame an order of things, which both in- 
timates to us, in some measure, his existence and 
nature, and at the same time shows us that our in- 
terest and duty are connected with a due obser- 
vance of the laws which emanate from this order 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 137 

of the world. The foundation for the truth of 
moral precepts is the same as that for all our other 
knowledge, excepting that of mathematics. In every 
law of nature which comes under our observation, 
we can suppose some alteration or modification of 
it ; but of the nature of mathematical relations we 
cannot. This distinction ought always to be duly 
attended to, whenever we draw any inferences from 
the nature of mathematical evidence, to that of 
moral or religious subjects. There is no difficulty 
in supposing that the earth might have been quite 
flat, or a perfect square, and been quite stationary, 
instead of its present globular shape, and its annual 
and diurnal motions ; or that man might have been 
made ten times larger than he is, and instead of 
two eyes he might have had a score. Can we not 
conceive that many of the principles of matter and 
motion might have been different ; and the pheno- 
mena of capillary attraction might have been ob- 
served in a tube of a foot, instead of being limited 
to that of one-tenth of an inch in diameter ? The 
laws of electric and magnetic action might, for any 
thing we can perceive to the contrary, have been 
quite different from what we find them to be ; and 
who will say that it would have been impossible to 
have made any alteration in the laws of chemical 



138 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C 

affinity ? Might it not have been so constituted that 
milk and water might have produced a poisonous 
compound to man, instead of these things forming 
a wholesome drink ? The same remarks may be 
applied to moral subjects. J4^hy the connexion, 
which we now find, should subsist between virtue 
and happiness, and vice and misery, we cannot tell, 
otherwise than by saying that such is the order or 
constitution of things. It might have been ordered 
that drinking* spirituous liquors, the excessive in- 
dulgence of which produces such lamentable effects, 
might have been attended with as few pernicious 
consequences as the drinking of water. It might 
have been so ordered that a blow upon a man's 
head, which in his present condition would produce 
instant death, might have been accompanied with 
the same effects which we experience from the tick- 
ling- of a straw. In the case of mathematical re- 
lations the matter stands somewhat different. Here 
we cannot conceive how two and two can make 
five or six; nor how the properties of a square 
should be the same as those of a circle. The 
principal point insisted upon, for the immutability 
and eternal nature of mathematical relations, is, 
that we cannot conceive the contrary of any axiom, 
and from this circumstance alone, the proposition 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 139 

is affirmed, that even the Deity himself could not 
alter the nature of these relations. But even if 
this position were granted, (which I think a very 
bold one) it could not justify us in inferring* that 
the relations amongst other things could not have 
been different from what they are found to be. 
Here the principal circumstance is wanting which 
induced us to come to this conclusion in mathema- 
tics. With respect to the operations of nature, we 
can easily imagine various alterations and modifica- 
tions to be effected upon them. The whole con- 
stitution of nature ; the numerous physical, moral, 
and intellectual relations which we observe amongst 
the multitude of things around us, must always, to 
our limited capacities, when abstractly considered, 
appear of an arbitrary character ; nor does a single 
tittle of the truth or influence of these laws of na- 
ture arise, as in the case of mathematics, from an 
idea that we cannot perceive how these various re- 
lations might have been otherwise constituted with 
regard to one another or to us. 

16. It appears to me that the principal cause of 
the antipathy which has generally been manifested 
against the doctrine, that morality is founded upon the 
will of God, has been, that upon this hypothesis the 
Almighty is made the author of sin. But allowing, 



140 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

for the sake of argument, that such a position may 
be fairly deducible from this theory of Archbishop 
King ; yet T should like to know, if there ever 
was, or can be, any moral theory proposed, that 
completely sets at rest this long agitated question — 
the origin of evil. Whatever speculative opinions 
we may embrace, we will find this question meet- 
ing us in the face at every turn ; and though some 
moral theories do more obviously and directly sug- 
gest the question, on the origin of evil, to the mind, 
than others, yet this question is involved in all the- 
ories, and seems incapable of a solution from any. 
It is a question to which we can never hope to 
make even the slightest progress towards affording 
a satisfactory answer, and we must be content to 
leave it, where every inquisitive mind, after years 
of toil has been obliged to leave it — just where it 
was found. 

If I am not mistaken, the arguments which are 
commonly brought forward for the additional obli- 
gations which the suggestions of natural morality 
receive from a direct revelation from heaven, are 
entirely founded upon the principle, that such a re- 
velation makes known to us more completely and 
decidedly, what is the will of the Almighty. It is 
allowed on all hands, that certain moral principles 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 141 

are recognised, and certain moral duties performed 
by all mankind, merely from the light of nature 
herself, but it is maintained, and I think properly 
enough, that the Scriptures unfold these principles 
more simply and clearly to our view, and enforce 
the performance of these duties with a greater 
weight of moral obligation ; and for these reasons 
the sacred writings are justly considered of para- 
mount importance. But the fact of man's moral 
duty being revealed from above, can be turned to 
no profitable purpose by those who adopt the 
opinion, that virtue is immutable in the absolute 
sense of the word, and coeval with the existence of 
the Deity himself. The reason of this is plain. — 
This immutability, this constitutional fitness of 
things, which is said to constitute the essence or 
abstract nature of virtue, is not made more apparent 
by a revelation than without one. We are taught 
by nature to pay, in some degree at least, a portion 
of respect to the lives and properties of our fellow- 
men ; and the duties which these moral suggestions 
make known to us, involve certain moral relations 
which are said to be of an eternal and immutable 
description, which the Almighty never had, nor 
never can have, any power to alter or modify in 
the smallest degree. Now, granting this for a 



142 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

moment to be correct, may we not be allowed to 
ask in what degree can this eternal and immutable 
character, which these virtues here alluded to pos- 
sess, be rendered more apparent to our perceptions 
by the Scriptures merely announcing* to us, that 
we are not to commit murder, and are not to steal ? 
If I am induced from my natural constitution to 
feel a certain emotion of pity when distress of any 
kind is presented to my mind, the eternal fitness 
or propriety of this feeling- is not in the slightest 
degree made more apparent, or different in its na- 
ture to us, by the mere circumstance, that we are 
commanded by God to be kind and compassionate 
to the weak and distressed ? The only additional 
force which such announcements can confer, is 
merely from a consideration, that these commands 
proceed immediately from the mouth of the author 
of our being, — that this visible manifestation of his 
existence and attributes points out more directly 
and plainly, that such and such duties it is His will 
and pleasure we should perform. 

It may also be worthy of remark here, that if 
moral distinctions were of the same nature as ma- 
thematical truths, then no revelation could possibly 
impart any additional degree of evidence to them, 
for they would be as perfect from the mere sugges- 



SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 143 

tions of the understanding, as they could be from 
any written or verbal declaration respecting them, 
of whatever nature that declaration might be. It 
would not have rendered the truth more forcible or 
more readily perceived, or in any degree added to 
its eternal or immutable nature, if it had formed 
part of the moral law, that man were to believe that 
three and three made nine, or that a square is not a 
circle. The case would stand precisely the same 
with respect to all moral distinctions, if these dis- 
tinctions were allowed to be of precisely the same 
nature as mathematical truths, eternal and immuta- 
ble, coeval with the Deity himself, and whose na- 
ture, it is contended, he can neither curtail, enlarge, 
or modify, not even in the smallest tittle. 

But it may be objected to what is here stated, 
that the reason why revelation adds so powerfully 
to the force of natural moral obligation is, that a 
future life, and rewards and punishments are there- 
by made known to us exclusively through this 
channel ; and these form powerful incentives to 
moral rectitude and true piety. But these rewards 
and punishments can do nothing more than add a 
certain portion of strength to these moral motives 
and inducements which are established by the con- 
stitution of nature, and which are acknowledged, 

3 



144 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

on all hands, to be completely independent of reve- 
lation. The Scriptures do not alter the nature of 
that moral evidence which we derive from the 
exercise of our various faculties, and from our 
station in the scale of social existence ; they only 
strengthen that evidence where it is feebly given, 
and direct, modify, and apply it to purposes of a 
lofty and ennobling character. 

The salutary influence, then, which a revealed 
religion exercises over our moral characters must 
arise, not from any change it effects in moral rela- 
tions abstractedly considered, but in making those 
relations more attended to by us, as inducing men 
to look upon them as being purely and simply the 
will of God, and as becoming invested with addi- 
tional obligation by reason of his command. 

All the arguments in favour of Christianity, drawn 
from what are termed its external evidences, do 
merely express thus much, — that such and such 
things are commanded to be done or to be avoided ; 
and that certain rewards and punishments are at- 
tached to these actions, and these commands and 
arrangements of Providence proceed from the will 
and desire of the Most High. Writers on the ex- 
ternal evidences tell us, in substance, that of the fit- 
ness or unfitness, the propriety or impropriety of 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 145 

the doctrines and duties found in the Scriptures, 
we are not at liberty to speak, nor whether the 
important object of a revelation might or might not 
have been accomplished in any other manner than 
we find it to have been. The question is, can we 
bring forward a sufficient portion cf evidence to 
show that the Bible is the word of God, and was 
sent to man to be a rule for his conduct ? if this 
can be answered in the affirmative, then all the 
objections which may be urged against any particu- 
lar doctrines or precepts contained therein, upon 
the ground that we cannot by our reason sufficiently 
comprehend the one, or perceive the utility of the 
other, must necessarily fall to the ground ; and the 
seemingly objectionable matter must remain as 
strictly obligatory upon us to believe and practise 
as other doctrines and precepts which appear more 
level to our understandings ; and for this sole rea- 
son, that we find what is above our reason to be 
contained in the Scriptures, which are defined to 
be the revealed will of God to man. 

Having, in the former part of this chapter, al- 
luded to the writings of Dr. Edwards and Dr. 
Dwight, I may be allowed, though somewhat out 
of place, to mention, that both these distinguished 
men have published theories of morality, in which 



146 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

theories they seem both to have been duly sensible 
of the vast importance of free-will, and how neces- 
sary it was to have proper conceptions of this free- 
dom, before we could be in a state to determine 
what share of praise or blame we ought to dispense 
to different moral or immoral actions. I consider 
the testimony of these writers as very important, 
not so much for its own sake, as from the circum- 
stance that they appear in this inquiry in the cha- 
racter of reluctant witnesses ; and their extorted 
evidence is not so much to be judged of by its literal 
as by its implied meaning. Dr. Edwards observes, 
that " It is not all beauty that is called virtue ; for 
instance, not the beauty of a building, of a flower, 
or of the rainbow ; but some beauty belonging to 
beings that have perception and will" " And per- 
haps it is needless for me to give notice to my 
readers, that when I speak of an intelligent being 
having a heart united, and benevolently disposed to 
being in general, I thereby mean intelligent being 
in general ; not inanimate things, or beings that 
have no perception or will, which are not capable 
objects of benevolence." * Here the Doctor main- 
tains, there can be no moral virtue without the 

* Jonathan Edwards' Works, vol. ii. p. 9, 10. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 147 

faculty of perceiving a tiling*, and the will to guide 
and direct that faculty. With the correctness or 
soundness of his theory of morals, (which, as far as 
I can understand it, seems to be the same in prin- 
ciple as that of my Lord Shaftsbury), I have no- 
thing to do here ; only it is quite obvious, that Dr. 
Edwards found he could not advance a single step in 
the elucidation of his views on the nature of virtue, 
without laying down as a preliminary principle 
the freedom of the will. 

Dr. Dwight's moral theory is, that utility is the 
foundation of virtue ; and he observes, that " It is 
hardly necessary to say, that involuntary beings 
can of themselves produce nothing, as being abso- 
lutely inactive ; and that there are no active beings 
besides those which are voluntary" " In what 
does the excellence of virtue consist ? In this, that 
it is the voluntary cause of happiness." " Minds 
are active only by means of the power oi willing" # 
These quotations will teach us how impossible it is 
for moral writers to make themselves understood 
without the taking with them the freedom of the 
will. 

* Dvvight's System of Theology, vol. iii. p. 435- 



148 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ON WHAT ARE TERMED THE INTELLECTUAL V1R* 
TUES, AND ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE 
POWER OF THE WILL AND OUR MORAL AND 
MENTAL NATURES. 



I think it will be found, upon close examina- 
tion, that the words, intelligence, wisdom, mind, 
talent, and others of a synonymous meaning, which 
are employed to denote those qualities of our men- 
tal constitution which call forth our admiration and 
esteem, are expressive of the power of voluntary 
action only. Any thing like compulsion, necessity, 
or mechanical agency, seem at variance with our 
common notions of mental superiority or intellec- 
tual worth. We suppose the mind to contain 
within itself the principle or cause of its own ac- 
tivity ; and to do what we please, or what we 
have a mind to do, is language simply declaratory 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 149 

of that attribute of our nature which constitutes us 
rational and intelligent beings. 

Though mankind may, in some measure, consi- 
der genius to be the gift of nature, yet when they 
bestow praise upon great talents and mental ac- 
quirements, they nevertheless seem to do so in con- 
sideration of these superior mental excellencies be- 
ing under the complete authority and control of the 
individual. Our familiar and common language 
is very expressive upon this point. We say a man 
has no mind of his own, when he seems to be in- 
fluenced more by the counsels and opinions of 
others, than by the original and voluntary efforts of 
his own understanding, even though these counsels 
and opinions be really good and correct of them- 
selves. The term, independent ?nind, is also em- 
ployed to denote a mind that is, in a great measure, 
free from the influence of other minds ; which 
views principles and systems with, as it were, its 
own eyes ; and which does not, in general, give its 
assent to the truth of propositions by implicit dicta- 
tion, but from individual and personal examination. 
Amongst that part of mankind who cultivate lite- 
rature with the laudable desire of exciting the es- 
teem and commanding the respect of their neigh- 
bours, or the world at large, nothing is guarded 



150 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

with more jealousy than this independence of 
mind ; and their constant desire is to show, that 
they owe more to their own exertions than to the 
instruction and influence of others. When the opi- 
nions and views of other persons exercise an entire 
and exclusive influence over us, and when that in- 
fluence is perceived, then we can never hope to en- 
joy literary fame or renown. 

How vastly important to our welfare and happi- 
ness are the endowments of the memory, yet they 
bear no comparison, in our estimation, to those of 
the understanding. Hence we hear the trite re- 
mark, that many persons complain of the badness 
of their memories, but that we hear few complain 
of the weakness of their judgments. To acknow- 
ledge this latter imperfection wounds their pride, 
because it derogates from their importance and re- 
spect. Again, " a grain of reason is worth a ton 
of memory" The foundation of these common 
remarks is, that memory is considered to be prin- 
cipally a passive power ; to partake of something 
like mechanical agency, and not to be so materially 
subject to the influence of the will, or voluntary 
power, as the understanding is. The praise we 
bestow upon a quick, powerful, and comprehensive 
judgment, is of a much higher and loftier character 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 151 

than that which is bestowed upon a strong and te- 
nacious memory. 

In the. art of oratory we admire and praise the 
man who delivers a long, eloquent, and instructive 
discourse to his audience ; and the coolness and self- 
possession he displays, also claim a portion of our 
admiration and esteem. Let us be told, however, 
that the discourse he has delivered is not his own 
composition, but that it had been composed by an- 
other person, and the speaker had only committed it 
to memory, our applause, on learning this piece of 
intelligence, will be considerably lessened ; we will 
no longer praise him for having all his knowledge 
so methodically arranged in his mind, and clothed 
in appropriate language, which he appears to have 
so completely under the command of his will. That 
portion of our approbation which arises from the 
conception we form to ourselves, that while he is 
speaking, he has all the faculties of his mind, judg- 
ment, reasoning, wit, and imagination, under his 
government, and that he artfully brings them into 
exercise, and seems to attend to them all at one 
time as jugglers do with their balls, immediately 
vanishes when we know that he is reduced in the 
scale of intelligence to a mere reciter of speeches, 
instead of being the author of them. 



152 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

There is no one who has been in the habit of 
attending public places where extemporaneous ora- 
tory is practised, but who must have noticed the 
great difference in the effect produced upon the au- 
dience by an extemporary speech, from one which 
is read from a paper or book. The reason of this 
is, I apprehend, that we have not such a good se- 
curity that the person who reads a speech to us 
did really make it, as if he delivered it off-hand. 
The powers of the will are not here so obviously 
brought into play. If it should be even supposed 
by the audience that the speaker has taken a long 
time to prepare his harangue, it lessens him in our 
estimation, as we imagine, and with justice, that by 
long pondering over his subject, and formally com- 
mitting it to memory, he may have been indebted 
to many incidental circumstances which might 
lessen the influence of the will. Hence it is that 
in public debates, we admire a speaker who gives 
us a ready reply upon the spur of the moment, to a 
speech which was formally and studiously delivered, 
and which bears internal evidence of its having been 
long thought about, and got up, as it is technically 
termed, with great care. 

Upon the same principle we admire quick and 
smart replies, repartees, and poetical impromptus, 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 153 

because they show, in a more than usually striking 
manner, the great power the will of the individual 
has over the intellectual powers, and acquired in- 
formation, which are, in a general way, necessary to 
produce these light and pleasant effusions. 

In music the case is precisely similar. We hear 
the sound of the organ at our door, and we feel a 
pleasure in the combination of musical notes ; but 
we never think of lavishing praise upon the man 
who mechanically turns the handle of the instru- 
ment, though he may be said to be the immediate 
cause of the sweet sounds we hear. And I think 
there can be no doubt but our pleasure would be 
very materially diminished were we to hear a piece 
of music, such, for example, as Handel's Creation, 
performed solely by mechanical contrivances, even 
if all the parts were executed in as accurate and 
melodious a manner as we have them in these musi- 
cal festivals, which are composed of the best vocal 
and instrumental performers in the kingdom. The 
music produced from such means as are here sup- 
posed would not raise our feelings above the point 
of complacency — so necessary is it that the innate 
resources of the mind itself should be supposed to 
be exerted, before we can receive intellectual gra- 



154 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

tification, or bestow praise on those agents which 
confer it. 

Were the finest poetry subjected to, or rather 
created by, purely mechanical rules and contriv- 
ances, it would be deprived of the principal source 
of pleasing us. If the lofty imaginations, the su- 
blime ideas, the beautiful imagery, and the smooth- 
ness of the verse, did not presuppose a vigorous 
exercise of the will of the poet, what is usually 
called poetry, no matter on what subjects employed, 
would excite little or no attention among mankind. 
The rules of versification, or what is termed the 
mechanical part of poetry, though of the greatest 
use for enabling us to express bur poetical ideas in 
an engaging and proper manner, are nevertheless 
productive of little praise to the poet, merely be- 
cause they are mechanical, and are not supposed to 
require any great effort of the will. 

There is no art which owes so much to the prin- 
ciple of voluntary agency as that of poetry. The 
poet, placed in the temple of nature, gives life and 
vitality to every thing around him. He holds an 
intercourse, and keeps up a constant sympathy with 
all nature's works ; and the woods and the groves, 
the mountains and the vallies, the mighty waters 
and the rippling streams, the clouds and the aii\ 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 155 

and the orbs which emblazon the canopy of hea- 
ven, are endowed with speech, and are made to 
see, to hear, to desire, to rejoice, and to be grate- 
ful, and to exercise all the functions of rational and 
moral agents. It is from this principle, and this 
alone, that poetry owes every thing which can 
charm the ear and animate the bosom. It is this 
art of personification which furnishes the poet with 
all his splendid imagery and fascinating illustra- 
tions, by which he bewitches his readers with the 
smiles of the vallies, the blushes and whispers of 
the woods, and the transporting accents of love 
which drop from the waterfall. It is this art of 
clothing inanimate things with the powers of per- 
ception and voluntary agency, which furnishes the 
pleasure and delight we feel in reading true poetry ; 
such, for example, as that which we find in many 
places in Scripture, when it is said that " the earth 
was full of the goodness of the Lord ; the sea roared, 
and the fulness thereof; the floods clapped their 
hands before the Lord, the mountains trembled at 
his presence ;" " the little hills rejoiced on every 
side;" " the pastures shouted for j oy ;" " the wilder- 
ness and the solitary place was glad ; the desert re- 
joiced, and blossomed as the rose, it blossomed 
abundantly, and rejoiced even with joy and sing- 

3 



156 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

ing." — " The mountains saw thee, and they trem- 
bled; the overflowing* of the waters passed by; 
the deep uttered his voice, and lift up his hands 
on high." (Hab. ch. iii. v. 10.) — " O thou sword 
of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet ? 
Put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest and be still.** 
(Jer. ch. xlvii. v. 6. — In the second book of Samuel, 
where David, hearing of the death of Saul and Jo- 
nathan, in the height of his grief calls for vengeance 
upon the mountains of Gilboa, Many hundreds 
of passages of the same kind might be taken from 
the sacred writings. 

We find this principle of personification carried 
to a great length by eminent poets of all ages and 
countries. In the fifth book of Milton's Paradise 
Lost, he describes Adam and Eve, in their morning 
thanksgiving to the Almighty, calling upon the 
sun, the moon, the stars, the elements, the mists 
and exhalations, the plants, the winds and foun- 
tains, to join them to swell the note of praise to 
their common creator. The affecting instance, also, 
in Shakspeare's King Lear, is another proof, out of 
many which jnight be produced, of the fine effect 
of personification, where the monarch, in the midst 
of a storm, exclaims — 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 157 

" Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters ; 
I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness ; 
I never gave you kingdoms ; calPd you children ; 
You owe me no subscription ; why then let fall 
Your horrible pleasure ?" 

This principle in our nature which induces us 
to carry on an important intercourse with animate 
and inanimate nature, is of a very extensive appli- 
cation ; and, though really constituting all that we 
denominate poetry, it is not exclusively confined to 
that noble art, but pervades all our every-day 
thoughts and common conversational language. It 
is from this source that untutored man 

" Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the winds," 

and fills the woods and the groves with fairies, genii, 
and demons. It is also the foundation of all hea- 
then deities, and superstitious rites and ceremonies, 
among mankind. 

Every one who has read Pope's " Rape of the 
Lock" will readily own that the whole pleasure 
which we derive from that fascinating piece of 
poetry, may be attributed solely to the proper ap- 
plication of this principle of personification. In his 
Messiah, also, where he versifies the language of 
Isaiah, he furnishes us with a beautiful example of 



158 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

the pleasure we feel from giving life and volition to 
inanimate things — 

" See nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring, 
With all the incense of the breathing spring ; 
See lofty Lebanon his head advance, 
See nodding forests on the mountains dance ; 
See spicy clouds from lowly Sharon rise, 
And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies ! 
Hark ! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers, 
Prepare the way ! a God, a God appears \ 
A God, a God ! the vocal hills reply ; 
The rocks proclaim th' approaching Deity. 
Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies ; 
Sink down ye mountains, and ye vallies rise ; 
With heads declin'd, ye cedars, homage pay ; 
Be smooth, ye rocks ; ye rapid floods give way !" 

From these instances, we may perceive the uni- 
versality of this principle of human nature, to in- 
vest even inanimate things with the properties and 
attributes of our minds and moral constitution. It 
is not a necessary, nor forced, nor constrained ac- 
tion which excites our sympathy, and calls forth 
our praise ; this would be truly destructive of every 
thing like poetical grandeur and sublimity ; but we 
clothe these objects of imagery with voluntary 
power. We invest them with all the properties of 
moral agents, and we describe them as rejoicing, 
and weeping, and singing, just because they possess 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 159 

within themselves the power and will to rejoice, to 
weep, and to sing; — in this consists the whole charm 
of personification. The deceptive process which 
exercises such an unlimited power over our opi- 
nions, sentiments, and feelings, is entirely founded 
upon this principle : That to make the objects of 
nature interesting, we must attribute to them some- 
thing distinct from mere matter, and remove them, 
in our conceptions, as far as possible from any thing 
of a really inanimate and mechanical nature. 

The importance of machinery of every descrip- 
tion to the happiness of men individually, and to 
the power and wealth of a state, is pretty generally 
acknowledged ; but, independent of the value of 
such contrivances for the saving of labour, the lus- 
tre they reflect upon the inventive powers of the 
human mind is very great indeed. But, notwith- 
standing these considerations, the objects of ma- 
chinery would make but very sorry imagery for a 
poem ; and the man who would invoke the assist- 
ance and sympathy of fly-wheels, boilers, and pis- 
tons, would be looked upon fitter for Bedlam, than 
to be placed upon the list of poets. The reason of 
this is obvious. He could not by any effort of ima- 
gination, clothe these things with the attributes of 
volition, which we know the moment we are made 
acquainted with their names, are the result of me- 



160 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C, 

chanical contrivance and skill. It is not that the 
objects of machinery are destitute of interest to man 
that they become unfit objects for imagery ; for, in 
this respect, they are vastly more valuable than 
many of the things which constitute the materials 
of poetical beauty, but solely, because it would ap- 
pear preposterous in us to look upon them as vo- 
luntary agents, when we always know that they 
must work by our own contrivance, and the mov- 
ing power is always that which we ourselves em- 
ploy. 

My friend gives me a correct account of many 
branches of knowledge, all of them of great import- 
ance to every individual of the species. He delivers 
what he says with correctness and propriety, and 
I have the opportunity of benefiting largely from 
his kind and agreeable communications. I come to 
learn, that all he has told me he took from an au- 
thor, word for word, which fell in his way acciden- 
tally. The praise I confer upon my friend is very 
slender to that which I bestow upon the author ; 
and the plain reason why I make this difference is> 
that there has been no intellectual effort excited — 
no power of the will called into action, like that 
which we suppose in the case of the author of the 
book. 

If a man could obtain all the acquired knowledge 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. l6l 

which the civilized world could furnish, and could 
carry it about with him, and deliver it to others in 
precisely the same state as he found it from the la- 
bours of others, he would scarcely deserve the name 
of a man of genius. He would want that charac- 
teristic mark, originality, which we suppose is more 
directly under the influence of the will than any 
other intellectual quality. 

When we perceive a man execute any intellectual 
achievement which commands general admiration 
and applause ; such for instance, as a fine picture, a 
noble piece of statuary, or a fine poem ; and w^hen 
we come to know that such a work has been accom- 
plished under very untoward and unfavourable cir- 
cumstances, such as extreme poverty, the distrac- 
tions of general business, the pressing and imme- 
diate cares resulting from a numerous family, or the 
want of a proper and liberal education, all of which 
would leave his will less free ; we never fail, under 
such circumstances as here supposed, to award a 
higher portion of praise to such a person than we 
would otherwise do, had he enjoyed all the advan- 
tages which flow from pecuniary independence, great 
leisure, and a systematic and enlightened education. 
Here we regulate our admiration upon this prin- 
ciple, that in the one case, a much greater effort of 



162 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

the will is necessary to contend against, and over- 
come the extraneous or accidental discouraging in- 
conveniences than in the other, where nothing 
seemed to stand in the way between the mind and 
the subject on which it was employed. 

The different degrees and kinds of mental en- 
dowments and defects may be accounted for by the 
same general law which operates in our moral con- 
stitution. Indeed there will be found to be a very 
striking analogy between the way in which we learn 
to become morally good, and the way by which 
we arrive at intellectual eminence, independent of 
the consideration that we estimate both our moral 
and mental qualifications by the same standard — 
that of the will. The argument on this head might 
be greatly extended, but it would lead us to be 
more metaphysical than the nature of this subject 
will admit. 

Without entering into any lengthened discussion 
on the nature of our minds, it may be remarked 
here, that the will has a great influence over the 
train of our ideas is clearly apparent, both from the 
authority of many able expounders of our mental 
nature, as well as from our individual experience. 
What goes under the common denomination of ori- 
ginality of thought, which is reckoned one of the 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 163 

principal attributes of a man of genius, is almost 
entirely dependent upon the strength of the will. 
Where this is weak or defective, it is in vain we 
look for strong, original, or vigorous conceptions. 
Every thing from such a source becomes puny, in- 
significant, and common-place. If we attend closely 
to the phenomena of thought, the cause of this will 
appear more manifest. When a man sits down to 
study, or to compare any thing which requires a 
moderate degree of intellectual exertion, he must 
endeavour to banish from his attention every extra- 
neous and wandering conception, by a steady and 
vigorous effort of his will ; otherwise he will never 
be able to think or to write any thing valuable on 
the subject under consideration, nor make any ad- 
vances on the discoveries of others. How neces- 
sary a habit of this kind is to a mathematician, for 
example, must appear evident to every one who 
has the slightest acquaintance with even the ele- 
ments of his science. If he do not keep a firm hold 
of his problem, but allow his mind to wander, and 
his attention to be distracted, he can never advance 
a single step in the demonstration ; so that his pro- 
gress in this department of human study, may be 
justly said to keep pace, both in rapidity and in ex- 
tent, with the original strength and vigour of his will. 



164 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C, 

If we look a little more narrowlv into the mat- 
ter, we will find that our advancement in every 
branch of human learning almost entirely depends 
upon the exercise and vigour of our wills. So 
much is this the case, and so frequently has it been 
noticed by philosophers, that some of them (and 
Helvetius is amongst the number) consider genius 
as nothing else but a fixed and exclusive attention 
paid to any given subject for a certain length of 
time. There is no one who has paid even common 
attention to the intellectual history of men of emi- 
nence in literature or philosophy, but must have re- 
marked how much their success and fame have 
arisen from a patient endurance of labour and a 
steady and concentrated attention to their subject. 
The historian must pay the most scrupulous and 
religious attention to order and method in the ar- 
rangement of his materials ; and he must wage, in 
his own mind, perpetual warfare against the sugges- 
tions of waywardness and inattention. The philo- 
sopher must also, when he is examining and ex- 
pounding matters of great intricacy and subtilty, 
keep constantly on his guard against the intrusion 
of ideas unconnected with his subject ; otherwise 
he will never be able to pursue these fine threads 
of thought, or to seize and unfold those almost 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 165 

evanescent mental elements, which must constitute 
the foundation of his success and reputation. In- 
deed it will be found that in every department of 
study, if success is to be obtained, and distinction 
earned, we must keep up a constant and rigid dis- 
cipline over our thoughts, and acquire the art of 
viewing our intellectual positions on every side, 
and banishing whatever unconnectedly obtrudes it- 
self upon the mind. Even the poet, who may at 
first sight seem to be more independent of the 
powers of the will, by his dealing in imaginary and 
fictitious representations, must nevertheless bow to 
the authority of voluntary agency ; and be continu- 
ally upon his guard in culling out those sentiments 
and images of grandeur, beauty, and pathos, from 
what is ridiculous, mean, and bombastical. 

It may also be worthy of remark here, that the 
difference between men of study and reflection and 
men of the world, arises from the different degrees of 
strength in their wills ; and this may be sufficient to 
account for the diversity of intellectual attainments 
and habits of the two classes. A man of study has 
a great command over the current of his thoughts ; 
he seems to have the power of arresting them at 
pleasure, to make them objects of his attention, and 
to use them as instruments for further mental dis- 



166 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

coveries : but men of the world are unable to 
check the train of their ideas, or to attend to any 
one object or pursuit a sufficient length of time, so 
as to be able to understand or comprehend it. Dis- 
tracted with business, amused with trifles, and dissi- 
pated by pleasure, they have no firm hold of their 
own minds, no power of keeping up a fixed or con- 
tinued attention. Hence their conversation be- 
comes uninteresting and frivolous to persons of cul- 
tivated and intelligent minds, and they ramble from 
one subject to another without ever seeming to un- 
derstand the merits of any. 

When we look over the numerous metaphysical 
theories, we are struck with the important station 
which the will, or voluntary powers of the mind, 
occupies in the estimation of the expounders of our 
mental frames. Here the necessity which philoso- 
phers have been under to give real spontaneity, or 
a self-regulating principle to the mind, is striking- 
ly exemplified. They cannot advance a single step 
in their progress, nor unite two sentences together 
intelligibly without the power of volition. Whatever 
differences there may be amongst their various the- 
ories in matters of detail, they are all material and 
immaterial hypotheses, obliged to take some self- 
regulating principle with them for their guide, and 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. l6j 

which principle they can trace no further than to 
the mind itself. Father Malanbranche maintains 
the mind to be an unextended, immaterial, and sim- 
ple substance ; but possessing two faculties or 
powers, namely the understanding and the will.* 
In Leibnitz's Theory of the Universe, he felt him- 
self obliged to give to his monades, or ultimate 
atoms of matter, perception and intelligence, before 
he could mould his views into any thing like an in- 
telligible or consistent system.t And his disciple, 
M. Wolf, though he denied perception to monades 
in general, could not however deny that perception 
or intelligence to the monades or atoms of the souls 
of men. 

Amongst the metaphysicians of our own country, 
we find precisely the same notions as to the neces- 
sity of endowing the mind with something like a 

* " L'esprit de Phomme, n'etant point materiel, ou etendu, est sans 
doute une substance simple, et sans aucune composition de parties : 
mais cependant on a coutume de distinguer en lui deux facultes, sa- 
voir, V entendement et la volonte." Recherche de la Verite, liv. i. 
chap. i. 

f " n y a done dans chaque monade une force qui est le principe 
de tous les changemens qui lui arrivent, ou de toutes les perceptions 
qu'elle eprouve, et on peut definir la substance, ce qui a en soi le 
principe de ses changemens." Condillec Traitedes Systemes, vol. iii. 
p. 147. 



168 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

self-regulating- power. Mr. Locke maintains, like 
Malanbranche, two distinct faculties, the under- 
standing and the will ; and in his chapter on power, 
he affirms that the only source from which we can 
derive the most correct notions of active power, is 
from our own spirit or mind.* In the views of 
those eminent writers who have succeeded him, 
we find the opinions as to the spontaneity of the 
mind essentially the same. Those who have dif- 
fered from Locke, seem to me to have done so 
principally because his theory had too much of a 
mechanical complexion about it. His resolving all 
the operations of the mind into sensation and re- 
flection, appeared to his opponents to savour too 
much of material philosophy ; and hence it is that 
we have Dr. Reid's numerous ultimate principles 
or powers, Professor Stewart's natural resources of 
the human mind, and Dr. Brown's intellectual law 
of suggestion ; all of which systems are founded 
upon, and directly recognise the principle, that the 
only notions we can form of mind or spirit is some- 
thing which contains within itself the production 
of its own faculties and movements. 

In the ideal system of Bishop Berkeley we find 

* Essay on the Human Understanding, vol- iii. 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 169 

this position explicitly and unconditionally laid 
down. He says, " but besides all that endless 
variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is 
likewise something which perceives them, and 
exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, 
remembering about them. This perceiving, active 
being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, myself. 
By which words I do not denote any one of my 
ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, 
wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, 
whereby they are perceived, for the existence of 
an idea consists in its being perceived." " A spirit 
is one simple, undivided, active being ; as it per- 
ceives ideas, it is called the understanding, and as 
it produces or otherwise operates about them, it is 
called the will" " There are spiritual substances, 
minds, or human souls which will or excite ideas 
in themselves at pleasure." " For by the word 
spirit we mean only that which thinks, wills, and 
perceives ; and this, and this alone, constitutes the 
signification of that term." " But it will be ob- 
jected, that if there is no idea signified by the 
terms soul, spirit, and substance, they are wholly 
insignificant or have no meaning in them. I an- 
swer, these words do mean or signify a real thing, 



170 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

which is neither an idea, or like an idea, but that 
which perceives ideas, and wills and reasons about 
them."* 

The only system of mental philosophy which 
openly and unconditionally denies the existence of 
any thing like spontaneity in the mind, is the 
vibratory, or automatic system of Dr. Hartley. 
But even here we find the Doctor reduced to a 
sad delemma — -that of having to take for granted 
the very principle which his whole book aims to 
subvert. It was a comparatively easy task for him 
to make the whole man vibrate from the crown of 
his head to the sole of his feet ; to give the sense 
of hearing a shake, the sense of touch a shake, 
and the sense of smelling a shake j but the prin- 
cipal difficulty which puzzled the Doctor was, 
where did this first and perpetual moving power 
reside or arise from ? Here the Doctor was ob- 
liged to take something for granted. He says, 
" Thus I suppose or postulate, in my first propo- 
sition, that sensations arise in the soul from mo- 
tions excited in the medullary substance of the 
brain."t The brain is here constituted the centre 

* Bishop Berkley's Principles of Human Knowledge, pp. 24, 30, 
40,96. 
f Hartley on Man, vol i. p. 526. 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 171 

of all sensation and reflection, and by the innate 
impulse of this medullary substance the whole 
man is set in motion, and all the principles, ha- 
bits, and sentiments of his whole nature, are, by 
this simple gratuitous principle, attempted to be ac- 
counted for. 

It may also be worthy of remark here, that the 
fact must be well known to all those who are 
tolerably acquainted with the writings which have 
opposed the opinions of Dr. Hartley, that the 
principal arguments that are brought forward 
against him, are founded purely upon a great dis- 
like to an} ; thing which savours of mechanical con- 
trivance when applied to the mind. The doc- 
trine of vibrations, from the great resemblance or 
analogy which is supposed to exist between it and 
the various machines in use amongst men, has al- 
ways been viewed with suspicion, and, at best, 
been only considered as a very bold attempt to 
identify the nature and operation of two things, 
mind and matter, which man, in almost all ages, 
have been obliged, from the mere force of circum- 
stances, to consider as two very different sub- 
stances. It is from this opinion, feeling, or if you 
will, prejudice, that philosophers have at all , times 
felt a great reluctance even to pay common atten- 



172 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

tion to any attempts which have been made to 
identify the laws of the immaterial part of our na- 
ture with the laws of matter, or subject the former 
to the rules of mechanical philosophy. 

It cannot have escaped the notice of those who 
have looked into the material systems which do 
either directly, or by implication, deny the exist- 
ence of an all-wise and intelligent first cause, how 
these mechanical theorists have puzzled and be- 
wildered themselves and others, by their attempts 
to make mind or thought a property of matter, 
and by stripping it of that self-regulating principle, 
which nature herself seems to induce us to consi- 
der as the indispensable attribute of mind or spirit. 
The definitions of matter usually given by these 
reasoners is a proof of this. The various quib- 
blings, shufflings, reservations, and qualifications, 
the class of writers here alluded to have recourse 
to in unfolding and laying down their views and 
principles, must be abundantly evident to every 
one who has ever looked into their theories; but 
to point out a peculiar specimen of this tortuous 
logic arising from the attempt to take from mind 
its spontaneity, I refer the reader to the first 
ten propositions of Spinoza's system, as I do not, 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 1^3 

for various reasons, think proper to quote them 
here. 

From these few remarks on metaphysical theo- 
ries, we may clearly perceive, that though they 
differ widely from each other in matters of detail, 
and have been brought forward to give counte- 
nance and support to various different moral and 
religious systems, yet these theories all recognise, 
in one shape or another, the principle that the 
mind, without the power of willing or of being 
the author of its own exertions, would cease to 
have any distinguishing mark from mere matter. 
It would perhaps be a very difficult thing to give a 
logical or satisfactory account of the origin of this 
prevailing opinion, other than this, that we are so 
constituted, that we cannot think otherwise of 
the operations of our own intellectual natures ; 
and so closely interwoven is this opinion with sub- 
jects of the deepest interest to us all, that I think 
we ought to avoid, as much as possible, all at- 
tempts to weaken it ; but, on the contrary, rely 
with implicit confidence in its truth, and look 
upon it as one of those primary suggestions of the 
author of our being, which may be safely followed 
whithersoever it mav lead us. 



174 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

Even those physiological inquiries which have 
been at various times entered into and published 
to the world, not with any direct or immediate 
view to bear upon the usual disquisitions of mental 
philosophy, but principally for the purpose of show- 
ing* the intimate connexion which subsists between 
certain forms of matter and motion, and certain in- 
tellectual states or qualifications, in order that 
wholesome rules might be framed for the health of 
both body and mind ; I say that systems which 
have been written with this view have at all times 
been objects of suspicion, and their moral tendency 
has, on numerous occasions, been called in ques- 
tion. The reasons why these unfavourable impres- 
sions have so generally prevailed against such spe- 
culations, seem to me to be that they have been al- 
ways conceived to have a direct tendency to assi- 
milate mind and matter, and to lay the foundation 
for the opinion that mind might, in some unper- 
ceived manner to us, be only a property or modifi- 
cation of matter. And it may parenthetically be 
noticed here, that in the very modern science of 
phrenology, we may observe the operation of that 
principle of our nature which is so hostile to every 
attempt to materialize the mind, even in the smallest 
degree — that if we examine the arguments of those 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 175 

who have written against it, and the reasons with 
which those arguments have been met by the advo- 
cates of the science, we cannot fail to perceive that 
there is a strong feeling against the system just on 
account of its material tendency. I do not state 
this with a view of disparaging this study in the 
smallest degree, for I must confess myself but par- 
tially acquainted with the principles of Doctors 
Gall and Spurzheim, and of their ingenious dis- 
ciples. I only wish to state the feeling there is 
against the system, and the ground on which I con- 
ceive that feeling rests. When certain mental qua- 
lifications, and moral dispositions, are meant to be 
traced to certain organs, states, or conditions of 
the brain, the obvious inference which people in 
general will draw, will be, that these mental and 
moral qualifications are merely the effects resulting 
from the material constitution of the organs to 
which they are respectively referred ; and as man- 
kind can be supposed to have but very little influ- 
ence over their own organic conformation, there 
does appear a seeming tendency in the science 
under review to materialize our mind and moral 
affections, to countenance the doctrine of fatality, 
and to shake the foundations of moral and intellec- 
tual responsibility, by inducing us to believe that 



176 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

our mental powers, and moral dispositions, are the 
result of an organization over which we have no 
control — And I have no hesitation in saying that 
that objection, on the score of the material ten- 
dency of phrenological speculations, will always 
prove the most formidable against them, and will 
confine their influence within very narrow limits 
indeed. Mankind have such an unconquerable 
aversion to every thing which has the most distant 
appearance of weakening their belief in their mind's 
spontaneity, or active, principle, that they will never 
generally embrace any speculations, how ingenious 
and refined soever they may be, or under whatever 
name or garb they may appear, which have even 
only an apparent tendency to make them believe 
that they are mere mechanical creatures, and act 
from the impulse of material necessity. 

There is a kind of artifice we employ when we 
speak of our minds as the sole source of all mental 
exertion — that of transferring the power of volition 
from the will, and placing it, for the time being, in 
some one or more of the other general faculties of 
the mind. We express this act by such phrases as 
the following : " By the sagacious perception 
of the course his antagonist intended to take, he 
parried the anticipated attack/' &c. " By the 

6 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 177 

power of his reason he regulated his will and de- 
sires." " The whole powers of his mind were un- 
der the control of a vigorous and cultivated ima- 
gination" In these, and many other similar in- 
stances which might be adduced, we seem to strip 
the will of all voluntary power, and represent our- 
selves under the complete influence of that faculty 
which we make, for the moment, the predominant 
one. We have here perception, reason, and ima- 
gination, respectively made the ruling power of 
the mind ; but in all these instances we have here 
given, it is always understood by us that the will 
is under no real restraint, that she makes a volun- 
tary delegation, so to speak, of her authority and 
influence, and in no instance do we for a moment 
conceive that the moving power of mind is placed 
in any thing external to the man himself, or to 
that which we denominate his mind or intellectual 
faculties. To suppose the moving power of the 
mind resided in any thing but in the mind itself, 
would be destructive of the very essence of mental 
existence. When we reason about, or speak of the 
mind of the Deity, w^e employ a similar artifice, 
and express our meaning in the same kind of lan- 
guage which we use when speaking of the various 
active powers or faculties of our minds. 



178 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

It appears to me, that there is a great similarity 
between the disputes relative to the freedom of the 
human mind, and those controversies which have 
in later years existed about the reality of the ma- 
terial world, — both as to their nature, and the 
mode in which they have been conducted. It 
must, I think, be conceded on all hands, that the 
ideal theory of Berkley and Hume has never yet 
received any thing like a logical refutation. We 
have not, by a chain of argumentation, been able 
to prove that there is any thing in nature besides 
the ideas and impressions of our own minds or 
thinking principle. The reality of the material 
universe rests upon a powerful but mere sugges- 
tion of nature, and is not, nor ever can be, consi- 
dered in the light of an object of belief to which 
we arrive by philosophical demonstration. We be- 
lieve in the existence or reality of external things 5 
we believe that the lands, and houses, and ships, 
and friends, and relations, have a positive reality 
as well when they are objects of our immediate 
perception, as when they are not perceived by us. 
We believe all this ; and in every moment of our 
life does this belief actuate our conduct both as it 
respects ourselves and others ; nor can we practi- 
cally set aside this conviction without making our- 



Intellectual virtues, &c. 179 

selves perfectly ridiculous, if not totally destroying- 
our existence. Yet we do not reason ourselves 
into this belief, nor do we employ reason to esta- 
blish the same belief in otherSc It is perfectly 
well known that the idealist has decidedly the ad- 
vantage, considered in the light of a mere reasoner. 
His system is protected in a way that no logical 
attacks can injure or destroy it. This Dr. Reid, 
its most zealous and able opponent, knew and ac- 
knowledged, and the whole of his writings, as well 
as those of others who have followed his steps on 
this subject, are grounded upon this simple and 
concise principle — -that the existence of material 
objects is suggested to us by a universal and pri- 
mary law of our nature, which we can neither ac- 
count for, nor counteract, by any process of mere 
reasoning. 

The question respecting the liberty of the human 
will has been discussed in nearly the same manner 
as the ideal philosophy. The leading features of both 
controversies are essentially the same. The notion of 
free agency is, I conceive, like our idea of material 
existence — a general suggestion of nature; but at the 
same time a suggestion liable, from its very essence* 
to logical objections of a similar character to those 



180 ILLUSTRATIONS, &G, 

which have been usually brought against the reality 
of external things. There is one point, however, 
in which the controversies differ, and it is this — 
that the opponents of Berkeley and Hume's doc- 
trine grounded their arguments upon the simple 
position that the reality of the material world was 
an elementary law-^-an ultimate principle — a sug- 
gestion of nature, universally acknowledged and 
interwoven with all our language, sentiments, and 
Opinions, and therefore, inaccessible to logical at- 
tacks ; but the advocates of free-will, in many 
cases, mistook the nature of the principle they ad- 
vanced and advocated. Instead of carrying on a 
defensive, they opened an offensive warfare upon 
their enemies ■; and fancied they were able to prove 
by pure demonstration, that the will was always 
perfectly and absolutely free in all its actions. 
Here some of the most able assertors of liberty 
committed a most grievous error ; for, by taking 
this lofty position, they exposed themselves to the 
merciless attacks of their opponents, who really 
seemed to have the decided advantage over them, 
so far as mere reasoning was concerned. 

It may also be noticed here, that those who are 
generally acquainted with the controversy upon ne- 
cessity and free-will, know, that between those ar- 



INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES, &C. 181 

guments, founded upon wit and ridicule, which 
have frequently been brought against necessity, and 
those advanced against the ideal system, there is 
the most perfect resemblance, and both idealist 
and necessarian have at all times exhibited a dispo- 
sition to be more readily ridiculed out of their 
principles than reasoned out of them. 

The distinction which has universally been ad- 
mitted to subsist between man and the other beings 
of animated nature, is principally founded upon 
the superiority of his mind — and that superiority 
consists in the possession of spontaneity — or a 
self-regulating principle. Whatever speculations 
philosophers have indulged in respecting the affini- 
ty between the instinct of animals and the reason 
of man, it has never been seriously affirmed that 
they stood upon an equal footing with him in the 
scale of intelligence ; and the only reason alleged 
for this difference is, that the lower animak were 
guided by a principle which seemed to be purely 
and essentially mechanical ; but that man, on the 
contrary, had the power of choice as a constituent 
part of his nature. We talk of animals being guid- 
ed by instinct, by impulse, by the economy of their 
nature, which modes of expression simply imply 
that their movements and habits are at all times 



182 ILLUSTRATIONS, &C. 

under the influence of necessary connexion ; but 
we never think of conferring- upon them (except 
for the purposes of poetical fiction) the attribute 
of intellectual responsibility. Man claims this at- 
tribute exclusively to himself ; and will not allow 
any of the myriads of beings which people this 
globe to participate in the honours which this dis- 
tinctive qualification confers upon him. 



188 



CHAPTER IX. 

GENERAL REMARKS UPON THE PRINCIPLES CON- 
TAINED IN THE FOREGOING CHAPTERS. 



From the analysis of our notions of intelligence and 
moral obligation which has been attempted in the 
preceding pages, we may readily perceive the great 
influence which our conceptions of voluntary agen- 
cy exercise over our ideas of right and wrong, and 
of our mental constitution, Our notions of perfect 
moral freedom are so interwoven with the rudi- 
ments of responsibility, and with the very texture 
of the language we employ to express these no- 
tions, that we cannot advance a single step in the 
investigation of our moral nature, without meeting 
with the suggestions of liberty at every turn, and 
becoming impressed with a deep conviction that 
they are not illusory, chimerical, and fictitious, but 
are solid, substantial, and conclusive, and form an 



184 GENERAL REMARKS 

important element in that class of phenomena which 
we denominate by the epithet of the moral world. 
The notion of moral freedom has all the charac- 
teristics of an original conception of the mind — a 
conception, however, which, though no set of 
words can fully and accurately define, yet no argu- 
mentative dexterity can darken or efface. Some 
philosophers may reason about the abstract nature 
of this conception ; may draw fine distinctions about 
its degrees of influence, or they may deny its exis- 
tence altogether ; but the cobwebs of subtilty af- 
ford a frail barrier against an impulse of nature, 
and a powerful and general feeling is not to be 
rooted up or subdued by doubtful principles or 
logical refinements. The freedom of the will is the 
vivifying and animating principle of our moral and 
intellectual natures — the pabulum of rational intel- 
ligence — that living power which alone distinguish- 
es man from a marble statue, or from the beasts 
that perish. 

So indissolubly, indeed, are our ideas of moral 
freedom connected with our notions of moral ac- 
countableness, that we can form to ourselves no 
conception of a being who is entitled to our praise 
or blame, without investing him with the power of 
doing the very contrary actions to those which we 



ON THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 185 

consider as good or evil, and which are calculated 
to call forth our moral approbation or censure. A 
being, without such a qualification, stands before 
us naked and lifeless — destitute of a single attribute 
of moral intelligence — but the moment we clothe 
him with freedom — the moment we suppose him to 
be possessed of the power of doing of himself the 
contraries to those actions required to be perform- 
ed or avoided ; — w r e do from that time, as it were 
by the wand of a magician, make him a new crea- 
ture ; place him under the influence of rewards and 
punishments ; and convert him, in fact, into what 
we understand and denominate by a moral agent, 
or responsible being. There is neither life, nor 
intelligence, nor wisdom, nor order, in the uni- 
verse, where the voice of moral and intellectual 
freedom is not heard, 

It cannot, however, be denied, (nor do the views 
I advocate require any such denial,) that our com- 
mon and familiar language on moral and intellec- 
tual subjects is strongly tinged in its composition 
with necessity. We talk of being under a binding 
obligation to do this or that action ; that we must 
do certain deeds before we can obtain praise or in- 
cur censure, and that nothing appears to give such 
a complete security for the exercise of a virtuous 



186 GENERAL REMARKS 

disposition, as when we talk of a person consider- 
ing himself bound by necessity to act according to 
the dictates of moral obligation But in all those 
instances where necessary connexion seems to be 
expressed or implied, it would aid us materially in 
forming just notions of the sources of moral appro- 
bation or disapprobation, were we to cast our eyes 
inwardly for a moment, and see what is really 
meant by such phrases as these : " We must of ne- 
cessity act in this manner." " These were the rea- 
sons which compelled me to act as I have done." 
" I could not help doing what I have done." Now, 
it appears to me, in all these instances, it is not a 
positive or absolute necessity which is here implied, 
but a illative or conditional one. Whenever we 
make use of such language, it is always understood, 
both by others and ourselves, that we have no 
power within us of acting differently ; that in no 
instance is it supposed that this power is ever sub- 
dued ; and when we say we have not the power to 
do this action or that, we simply mean that we can 
perform of ourselves the prohibited action, but we 
will not perform it. I think every one will be 
convinced that the voluntary powers of the mind 
are not in such cases for a moment suspended, if he 
will only attend to his own consciousness, and not 



ON THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 187 

be exclusively guided in his conclusions, by the li- 
teral meaning of the language he employs. Let us 
suppose that the moral and intellectual actions of a 
person are the consequences of an interminable 
series of causes and effects, and over these causes 
and effects he has not the slightest control ; we 
then cease to consider him as a moral and intellec- 
tual being ; and would no more think of conferring 
praise or blame upon him for any thing he might 
do towards ourselves or others, than we would 
think of eulogizing or condemning those inanimate 
objects, which, by the well known influence of 
physical causes, are sometimes instrumental in con- 
ferring both benefits and injuries upon us. 

To so great a length, indeed, do we carry this 
repugnance to every thing like compulsory influ- 
ence over our minds and moral powers, that a very 
striking fact may be noticed here, respecting our re- 
lation to the Deity, namely, that we conceive our- 
selves, to a certain extent, beyond even his direct 
or immediate power. Though reason and piety 
both impress upon us the truth that he is our crea- 
tor, and the upholder of our existence ; that in him 
we are truly said " to live, and move, and have our 
being ;" and though we express our entire convic- 
tion of this truth in its abstract shape, almost every 



188 GENERAL REMARKS 

moment of our lives, yet we do so only in a quali- 
fied and conditional manner. We are so consti- 
tuted that we are obliged to place the whole man, 
to a limited degree, beyond the sphere of His im- 
mediate agency or control, in order that we may 
form to ourselves correct conceptions of the nature 
of our intellectual and moral faculties and our va- 
rious duties, and of the justice of those rewards and 
punishments which are annexed to their perform- 
ance or non-performance. We do not conceive 
that the Almighty is, in an absolute sense, the 
author of every individual thought, or every 
individual action we think or perform, nor do 
we conceive that it militates against either phi- 
losophical truth or strict piety, to say that we 
have mental and moral powers within ourselves 
to do, to a certain extent, whatever we please. The 
reason of this is obvious. It is this conception of 
mental and moral liberty which constitutes us ra- 
tional creatures, and it is impossible for us to per- 
ceive the least shadow of moral obligation, if our 
every thought and action were referred to the Al- 
mighty's immediate power, or to any subordinate 
agents he might please to appoint. 

The degree of influence which the divine Being 
exercises over us, has been one of the most fruitful 
sources of theological disputation. Many divines 



ON THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 18^ 

have attributed all our good actions to the direct 
interposition of the Deity, but few, if any, have had 
the boldness to maintain, that our wicked actions 
might be traced to the same influence. The power 
of doing evil has, therefore, by common consent, 
been referred to the free-will of man, and on this 
account he has been exposed to its consequences. 
And in the multitude of books which have been 
written on this topic at various times, we univer- 
sally find, that the popular or universal feeling of 
liberty has always been urged against the abstract 
principle of direct influence, and for this sole rea- 
son, that our moral responsibility was thought to 
be endangered by admitting a principle which had 
an apparent, if not a real tendency to represent us 
in the light of mere agents, or instruments in the 
hands of the divine Being. 

The substance of the preceding remarks may he 
considered to have a direct bearing upon the gene- 
ral nature and conduct of the Deity, according to 
the plain and familiar notions we form of his divine 
nature. An infinite series of causes and effects is 
justly considered as destructive of the very nature 
or essence of intelligent and creative power. And 
why ? Just because we cannot conceive any thing 
like intelligence and moral responsibility to follow 



190 GENERAL REMARKS 

from the nature of necessary connexion. We go 
from one course to another, until we grow weary 
or exhausted with the inanimate and desolate na- 
ture of the journey, and we then stop short, and 
endow something or another with creative and 
self-contained power, and this principle or being, 
or whatever it may be termed, is all that men do, 
or can know, of an all-governing and providential 
nature, from the mere exercise of their own limit- 
ed powers, We do not come to this conclusion in 
natural theology by mere reasoning ; there is not a 
particle of any thing which, according to the inter- 
pretation of ordinary language, can be called reason 
in it ; it is a suggestion of the mind alone, or ra- 
ther, perhaps, it might be termed an expression of 
this position, that necessary connexion, considered 
merely as necessary connexion, is totally at va- 
riance with all notions of rational intelligences, whe- 
ther divine or human. It is true we take this ne- 
cessary connexion with us a certain length in our 
inquiries, but we soon cast it off, and press at once 
to the conclusion, that there must be some self-ex- 
istent, self-moving cause of all things, and we clothe 
this supreme power with all intellectual and moral 
responsibility, just because we cannot make any 
progress in our investigations without it ; and be- 



ON THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 191 

cause a necessary chain of causes and effects, when 
viewed in itself, can account for nothing, and every 
thing under its exclusive contemplation being dead 
and lifeless, presenting to the eye nothing but a 
barren and dreary wilderness, without a single 
point on which our intellectual vision can rest with 
pleasure or satisfaction. When, however, we take 
this principle of inventive power for granted, we 
have then a rallying point of infinite value and im- 
portance to man. Like the mountain on which 
the ark rested, after beating about in the dreary 
wastes of a universal ocean, the principle of divine 
intelligence affords a secure landing place for the 
human race, and gives rise to a new and better or- 
der of things ; to a vast variety and succession of 
new exertions, of new hopes, and of new enjoy- 
ments. 

We come to the knowledge of the human mind, 
and of moral responsibility or accountableness, by 
precisely the same process as we come to the know- 
ledge of the divine nature and attributes. Here 
necessary connexion, considered in the abstract, can 
afford us no information nor satisfaction as to our 
own nature, duties, or expectations. An infinite 
series of causes and effects, relative to a man's in- 
tellectual and moral nature, is productive of just 



192 GENERAL REMARKS 

the same effects, as an infinite series of physical 
causes and effects, when applied to the constitution 
of the universe. The mind shrinks from both with 
horror ; and to give itself ease — to loose itself from 
its trammels and difficulties, it does, in its consi- 
deration of mental and moral causes and effects, 
exactly the same thing as it does when it views the 
chain of physical causes and effects ; it creates with- 
in itself a self-moving, an intelligent, and account- 
able principle. We do at once take for granted 
that we are the real instruments of our own mental 
and moral actions, of an accountable description ; 
and the only reason we can advance for this is, that 
we cannot, were we ever so willing, place our- 
selves in opposition to our own constitution, and 
connect moral responsibility with an infinite series 
of mental and moral causes and effects. But the 
belief that we are the true and sole cause of our 
own actions, is not, it may be owned, susceptible 
of any thing like a logical demonstration ; but we 
take the thing for granted, just because we are 
obliged to do so on account of its being an object 
of intuitive belief. 

The doctrine of a supreme and intelligent go- 
vernor of the universe, is nothing more than the 
doctrine of divine free will ; it is only clothing the 

6 J ° 



ON THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 193 

last link in the chain of causes and effects with that 
attribute with which we invest our own mental and 
moral constitutions ; that we may be considered ra- 
tional and accountable beings. Take away this no- 
tion of freedom in the divine nature, and you do 
with one blow annihilate the existence of Deity al- 
together. There is nothing left to satisfy or give 
pleasure to the mind. The asserter of liberty does 
no more in assuming his principle of free-will, than 
the believer in the existence of a Deity does when 
he assumes his principle of divine intelligence. The 
one discards the infinite series of mental and moral 
causes and effects, and the other, in like manner, 
renounces an infinite series of physical causes and 
effects, and both for the same reason, namely, the 
complete incompatibility of associating notions of 
intelligence and moral responsibility with the pure 
and naked principle of necessary connexion. The 
advocate of free-will, when he is taunted with rea- 
soning upon principles which he cannot logically 
maintain, may console himself with the recollection 
that he does no more than every man does who ac- 
knowledges the existence of a divine and intelligent 
first cause, which called the universe into being ; 
and that the same arguments which are brought 
forward to impugn the doctrine of human freedom, 

o 



194 GENERAL REMARKS 

must, if consistency be preserved, and they be push- 
ed to their utmost extent, go to destroy, root and 
branch, the fundamental articles of all natural and 
revealed religion. 

I should wish, however, to guard myself here 
against a possible misapprehension of my meaning* 
It may be said that I make the doctrine of a divine 
nature depend upon a mere gratuitous assumption. 
I on no account mean this, in the ordinary accep- 
tation of language ; what I mean is, that the belief 
in a Deity arises from a natural suggestion of the 
human mind — a suggestion, the universality of 
which, amongst all the different races of men, many 
striking and conclusive manifestations might be fur- 
nished. I have always thought that those authors 
who have treated of the existence of a Deity, by 
endeavouring to prove the truth of this great doc- 
trine, by a course of abstract reasoning, have been 
labouring under a great mistake, by conceiving that 
a principle, in a great measure intuitive, was suscep- 
tible of logical demonstration. The Almighty has not 
left himself without a witness. He has not left it to 
the exclusive province of the logician to demon- 
strate his being and attributes, but has imprinted 
His existence upon the hearts of all men ; though 
in some, by faint and shadowy characters, yet so 



ON THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 195 

universally perceptible, that a philosopher is fully 
warranted in considering His existence as founded 
upon an original suggestion of human nature. 

There is even in idolatry itself, in all its forms 
and degrees, something conspicuously illustrative 
of that principle of our nature, immediately under 
consideration, by investing the various imaginary 
deities with the most perfect voluntary power, and 
in avoiding every thing which has the most distant 
appearance of even a limited or modified fatality. 
The workings of nature in the savage breast, fur- 
nish us with abundant evidence that necessary con- 
nexion affords to him no satisfactory solution of 
those few facts of a physical, mental, and moral 
character, which constitute the sum total of his 
knowledge ; but he gives life and vitality to the 
whole universe, by filling every department with 
the fanciful beings of his own imagination, clothed 
with the all-powerful attribute of perfect volition. 
The doctrine of necessity is not the doctrine of un- 
civilized man. The perfect theist takes into his 
view a wide range of causes and effects, and when 
his power of partial enumeration fails him, he as- 
sumes a s?lf-existent, intelligent, and moral being, 
as the true and only cause of all things, and as the 
onlv means of satisfactorily accounting 1 for those 



196 GENERAL REMARKS 

events which fall under his notice ; but untutored 
man can scarcely connect two causes and effects to- 
gether without calling in the assistance of a super- 
natural agency. The Deity of the rational theist 
is placed by him at the utmost boundaries of mate- 
rial and intellectual existence, and is endowed with 
infinite power and wisdom to create and uphold 
that order of things which He has chosen to make ; 
but to the savage, nature is divided into thousands 
of little principalities and powers, over each of 
which a being is placed, with whose nature and 
localities he conceives himself intimately acquainted, 
and who possesses, as an indispensable attribute or 
condition of his being, the power to do of himself 
whatever his fancied will or pleasure may dictate. 
Had it not been for this absolute power of free- 
agency with which the deities and idols of heathen 
nations are endowed, they would never have been 
created at all ; for the only immediate purpose to 
which they are generally applied, is that of resolv- 
ing the various phenomena of nature, which fall 
under their observation, into the will or desire of 
these imaginary objects of adoration. 

But leaving these remarks upon rational and 
idolatrous worship, which might be considerably 
extended, let us notice a common objection urged 



ON THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 197 

by necessarians against the system of human free- 
dom, namely, that it is a moral necessity they 
contend for, and not a physical one. Now, in my 
humble opinion, this objection amounts to nothing; 
or rather it ought to be termed a distinction with- 
out a difference. Our idea of necessary connexion 
is a simple, uncompounded, unalterable, and unde- 
finable idea, an idea which may change from object 
to object, but which never assumes any other ap- 
pearance to the mind, so to speak, but one. This 
idea, or notion, may be connected with material 
objects, with moral objects, or with mental objects, 
but this idea, notion, conception, thought, or by what- 
ever name it may be called, of necessary connexion, 
maintains the same fixed and unchangeable charac- 
ter. What is, or can be meant by moral necessity ? 
If it mean any thing, it must mean that moral ob- 
jects are connected or bound together by a prin- 
ciple of connexion as indissoluble and fixed as 
that which we conceive links together the causes 
and effects in the material universe. I here call 
this necessary connexion, or principle of causation, 
a notion or conception ; I only do so in a quali- 
fied sense, and in conformity with the established 
rules of language. This notion or thought ought 
to be termed an object of belief only ; for it is like 



198 GENERAL REMARKS 

many other simple elements of mind, more an ob- 
ject of faith than an object of perception ; using 
the word perception in the same sense we usually 
do when we speak of perceiving the primary or 
secondary qualities of matter. In material objects 
we do not see the connecting principle — the vincu- 
lum^ as it is termed, which links causes and effects 
together ; all that we know of physical causation 
is, that one thing precedes another in a regular 
order of sequence, and we in the usual way of 
thinking and speaking- give the name of cause to 
that event which precedes, and the name of effect 
to that event which follows in the order of time. 
I see one body strike another, and I perceive that 
motion follows ; but I do not pretend to see that 
jiecessary principle of connexion which binds this 
cause and effect together ; though the belief in the 
existence of such a principle of connexion is as 
firmly rivetted in my mind as any thing can possibly 
be. I talk about it, and act upon it, yet it cannot, 
without a forced construction, be said to be an ob- 
ject of my perception. 

Now in precisely the same way do we think and 
reason on moral objects. I see a man follow a 
certain line of conduct, and I see poverty, misery, 
and distress of mind follow that conduct. I see 



ON THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 199 

not the principle of connexion between the moral 
cause and the moral effect ; but my belief in that 
connexion is just as firmly established in my mind, 
as any physical connexion can possibly be. Now 
let any man attend to what passes in his own mind 
in such respective occasions as we have just men- 
tioned, and see what difference he can conceive 
between the connexion which subsists among ma- 
terial objects and that which exists amongst objects 
of a moral kind ? I feel confident he will, on a 
moment's consideration, find that he can conceive 
no difference at all. The same thing holds good 
in our intellectual nature. We know that a cer- 
tain idea, or train of ideas, will invariably recal to 
the mind another idea or train of ideas ; but we do 
not see here that principle which binds the two 
ideas or separate portions of thought together. 
The necessary connexion which subsists amongst 
material, moral, and mental objects, is, as far as 
we can perceive from an appeal to our own con- 
sciousness, precisely the same. This connexion 
may arise from various objects or events, but it 
preserves its identity throughout every change, and 
is always the same simple undivided element of our 
thought and belief. Let the matter be viewed in 
whatever light it may, there is not the slightest 



200 GENERAL REMARKS, &C. 

foundation for this distinction between moral and 
material necessity, so far as the abstract principle 
of connexion is concerned ; and as to this essential 
distinction being calculated to ease the necessarian 
from his difficulties, it will be found to do so only 
by enabling him to slide away from the real ques- 
tion in dispute, and to shelter himself under the 
thin garb of verbal equivocation. 



201 



CHAPTER X. 



A FEW THEORETICAL REMARKS— CONCLUSION. 



I will here make a few remarks on the nature 
of moral action generally, and these may illustrate 
a little more clearly my own notions of free- 
will — at the same time, I wish these remarks to be 
considered as purely theoretical, and as having- only 
a remote, not immediate or necessary connexion 
with what is advanced elsewhere in this work. 

To lay down the principle at the outset I wish 
to illustrate, I may be allowed to observe, that there 
are, in my opinion, two different powers which influ- 
ence human action, one is the will, or the faculty of 
volition, and the other power, so far as I know, has 
no particular name, but may be comprehended un- 
der what Dr, Hartley calls mechanical philosophy, 



202 THEORETICAL REMARKS. 

and which I shall take the liberty of calling me- 
chanical power* It will be necessary for the right 
understanding of what has to follow, to observe, 
that I suppose these two powers quite different in 
their natures and independent in their operations. 
The power of the will always remains the same, 
and does not gradually assume the nature and ap- 
pearances of mechanical power, or automatic mo- 
tion, as the advocates of Hartley affirm. This is 
an important distinction, which is necessary to be 
kept in view, and which renders what I have to 
observe on this subject very different, both in form 
and in principle, from what goes under the general 
denomination of the Hartleian theory. 

It may be observed, that Mr. Dugald Stew^art, 
in his criticisms on the mechanical philosophy of 
Dr. Hartley, endeavours to show that all those 
powers which are exercised over different parts of 
the body, and which are generally denominated 
voluntary ones, always remain such. There is a 
good deal of plausibility in Mr. Stewart's reason- 
ings, but they do not prove to the full extent the 
truth of the principles he wishes to establish. Ac- 
cording to the views of Dr. Hartley, there is no 
such thing as will or voluntary power. It is true 
he does not hesitate to use these terms in his spe~ 



CONCLUSION. 203 

eulations, but then they are considered by him and 
his disciples as figures of speech only, and do not 
stand for any thing having a distinct or permanent 
existence. It must be fully apparent to every 
reader of the vibratory or automatic philosophy, 
that the only difficulty which its disciples labour 
under, is to show how all our voluntary motions 
gradually assume the nature and appearances of 
mechanical agency. This is the point they al- 
ways wish to establish. The Doctor says that vo- 
luntary powers are voluntary powers only in name. 
Now Mr. Stewart takes the opposite side of the 
argument, and wishes to maintain that there is no- 
thing mechanical in what is generally attributed to 
the operations of habit, but that whatever series 
of bodily actions take their source from the will, 
the will continues to exercise a constant and exclu- 
sive influence over these actions as long as they 
exist. His remarks upon this subject are too long 
for quoting here, but the position he wishes to 
establish, and which is fairly deducible from his 
principles, is, that no power of a mechanical 
nature influences our intellectual and moral fa- 
culties. Both these philosophers are in the 
wrong ; and the truth, I apprehend, may be found 
by steering a middle course. It is clear from ob- 



204 THEORETICAL REMARKS. ' 

servation, that some parts of our bodily frames 
are under the influence of the will, but that this 
influence is by no means general or complete. The 
power of the will, for example, over the secretory 
organs of the body, is well known ; yet this power 
can only be carried to a certain point, beyond 
which it is not felt or perceived, and we become 
real involuntary agents. Now this fact involves a 
difficulty similar to that which Mr. Stewart urges 
against the mechanical philosophy of Dr. Hartley. 
The influence of the will over these organs is con- 
siderable, and must have been observed by every 
individual, yet this influence is felt only to a cer- 
tain degree, and beyond that degree the exercise 
of the different functions must be carried on by 
some secret power or agency, with which we shall 
probably remain for ever unacquainted, and which 
may as well be called mechanical as any thing else. 
Again, when a person is trembling with cold, and 
if the cold be not very severe, he has it iri his 
power to lessen, and even, in some cases, to stop 
the trembling altogether, by a vigorous and steady 
effort of his will. But when the cold is severe, 
and the trembling in consequence great, the influ- 
ence of the will is completely nugatory, and the 
trembling continues until the faculties of the body 



CONCLUSION. 205 

become powerless, or beat be communicated to 
the frame by some natural or artificial means. 

Now it cannot possibly be maintained that the 
influence of the will is constant and complete in 
all these cases, but that, from the rapidity of the 
bodily motions, we are not able to perceive it. We 
have all the reason the nature of the thing- will ad- 
mit of, to suppose that those bodily movements 
and functions are carried on by two different kinds 
of powers. And what is this power which is dif- 
ferent from the will ? What is it that takes, in 
certain states of our bodies, all self-control out of 
our power, and makes us mere machines ? May 
it not as well be called mechanical as by any other 
name ? 

The exercise of the will over our moral powers has 
something* extremely analogous in it to its influence 
over the organs of the body. It is not only acknow- 
ledged by all moralists, but inferred by the plainest 
dictates of common sense, that the passions are, 
to a certain degree, removed from any direct in- 
fluence of the will, and may generally be consider- 
ed in the light of blind impulses, undoubtedly urg- 
ing the agent on towards a given end or object, 
but without allowing any time for reflection, or for 
bringing into active operation the powers of the 



206 THEORETICAL REMARKS. 

will. Observation clearly teaches us that there is 
as great a diversity amongst the passions of the mind 
as amongst the organs of the body. Some being 
more directly open to the influence of the will, 
and more under its sway and authority than others 
— he may also distinctly perceive that all the pas- 
sions, like the organs of the body when excited to 
action, are more easily counteracted at their com- 
mencement than when allowed to run a certain 
course. How often do we find that when our 
passions are moderately indulged, we have them, 
in some measure, under our command, but when 
they are allowed a certain scope of indulgence, 
they become quite unmanageable, and hurry us on 
in our passionate career, not only without any as- 
sistance of the will, but in complete defiance of its 
power and authority. Hence it becomes an im- 
portant branch of moral discipline to inculcate the 
necessity of checking our passions at the beginning, 
before they have been allowed to gain strength by 
exercise, and we fall easy victims to their despotic 
fury. 

When we throw our eyes leisurely over the ex- 
tensive field of human character, we instantly per- 
ceive that the conduct of men in this universe in 
which he is placed, presents appearances sufficient- 



CONCLUSION. 207 

ly regular and uniform, and that there is reason- 
able ground for classifying his motives to action, 
and subjecting his conduct to general rules and 
principles. This is the origin of all these specula- 
tive maxims and systems which, when embodied 
into actual practice, embrace all the principles of 
civil policy, or the obligations he owes to mankind 
in general, or to the society to which he more im- 
mediately belongs ; and also of that portion of 
moral philosophy which appertains to the preserva- 
tion of his own individual existence, security, and 
comfort. But in proportion as we become less ge- 
neral in our remarks, dive more into detail, and 
give our inquiries more individuality and minute- 
ness, the uniformity and general appearances of 
human character become more evanescent and im- 
perceptible ; and we may clearly perceive a consi- 
derable diversity of conduct and temper amongst 
the throng of the world, and that each man is dis- 
tinguished from his neighbour by slight, though 
clearly defined, shades of moral character and be- 
haviour. It is this almost total absence of gene- 
ralizing, and that close and accurate attention to 
individual character, which give that tact and use- 
ful portion of knowledge to what are termed men 
of the world ; and which, in a great measure, lay 



208 THEORETICAL REMARKS. 

the foundation for history, poetry, the dramatic art, 
and those light and sprightly delineations of human 
passions and character, which form the great mass 
of the current literature of every country, and 
which productions take their rise more from ca- 
pricious and incidental circumstances, resulting 
from different manners, fashions, and customs, than 
from the more comprehensive and abstract princi- 
ples of human nature. 

The moral differences of temper and conduct 
amongst mankind may therefore be safely taken as 
an indisputable fact ; and these differences are of 
such a nature as to induce one to consider them as 
purely constitutional. No person who has paid at- 
tention to his own children, or marked with care 
the development of the moral powers in the child- 
ren of others, but must have frequently noticed great 
differences of temper and disposition amongst them ; 
and these peculiarities are frequently so striking, 
that we are sometimes enabled, with tolerable ac- 
curacy, to foretel the predominating moral bias the 
child will exhibit when he arrives at manhood. 
The only thing which remains for us to perform, is 
to endeavour to account for these differences, and 
to reduce that multitude of individual and insulated 



CONCLUSION. 209 

rnoral facts to some adequate cause or general prin- 
ciple. 

The principle I would wish to lay down is, that 
all the moral differences amongst mankind may be 
attributed to the different degrees of strength of 
their wills or voluntary powers. Whenever we 
perceive a man who knows right from wrong, de- 
viating in his conduct from the standard of moral 
obligation, the power of the will in that individual 
is too weak, and the mechanical influence too strong, 
either from some organic defect, bad cultivation, or 
misdirection of the former power. We frequently 
meet with people in society who lament in earnest 
and pathetic terms, their total inability to live up 
to the common standard of worldly morality ; not 
from any secret dislike to practise the duties and 
obligations of life, but from a consciousness that 
they have not the power of doing otherwise. They 
hesitate, have no firmness, and when two different 
lines of conduct lie before them, they reluctantly, 
as it were, prefer the ways of wickedness to those 
of virtue and prudence. In some individuals the 
power of the will is so very feeble, that mankind 
conceive them to be purely involuntary agents 
under the direct influence of some invisible power, 

p 



210 THEORETICAL REMARKS. 

which, for want of a better name, they denominate 
by the epithets infatuation and fatality. 

That the differences of moral constitutions arise 
from the original or acquired strength of the will, 
is not, I apprehend, a new doctrine ; for it has 
made its appearance under different appellations. 
The various physical temperaments of the physi- 
cian will be found to be, so far as they relate to our 
tempers and dispositions, descriptive of the different 
degrees in which people possess voluntary power 
or self-control. Those who maintain this doctrine 
of temperaments, (and there are not many who re- 
ject it), tell us, that certain bodily conformations 
are connected with certain moral dispositions or 
habits, and that some men have by nature a stronger 
power within themselves to regulate and guide 
their appetites and passions than others. The truth 
of this position is fully established by observation. 
We find some persons so irregularly constituted, so 
to speak, exhibiting such a disproportion between 
the strength of their passions and appetites, and the 
power of their wills, that their whole lives present 
nothing but a scene of disorder and confusion ; and 
such a close and intimate union does there seem to 
exist between the body and the moral principle, 
that if a certain temperament be stated to us, we 



CONCLUSION. 211 

are able, in nine cases out of ten, to give a pretty 
correct outline of tlie prevailing moral bias which 
will be connected with that temperament. Doubt- 
less the original moral constitution, as well as the 
bodily, may be greatly altered by education, and 
the peculiar circumstances of life in which the in- 
dividual is placed ; but this will not alter the na- 
ture or force of the general principle. It may also 
be remarked here, that the various theories and 
observations we meet with in medical writers re- 
specting the nature and mode of operation of the 
nervous system, will be found to be grounded upon 
the different proportions which subsist between the 
passions and appetites, and the will, in various in- 
dividuals. 

I do not by any means think that there is any 
additional difficulty thrown in the way of account- 
ing for the phenomena of human nature by the sup- 
position of two independent principles or powers of 
action. One general kind of notion is, in its ab- 
stract nature, just as unaccountable as twenty dif- 
ferent kinds can be. Nor can there be any reason- 
able objection urged against men's possessing spon- 
taneous motion, in the absolute sense of the term ; 
seeing that the necessary motion, which is implied 
in the contrary hypothesis, is equally as far removed 



tl. c 2 THEORETICAL REMARKS. 

from our observation and scrutiny. Archbishop 
King remarks on this subject. " But to confess the 
truth, 'tis no less difficult to conceive a thing to be 
moved or determined by another than by itself; 
but as we are accustomed to material agents, all 
which are passive in their operations, we are certain 
of the fact, and not at all solicitous about the man- 
ner of it ; whereas if we consider the thing tho- 
roughly, we shall find ourselves as far from appre- 
hending- how motion is communicated from one 
body to another, as how the will can move itself ; 
but there seems to be nothing wonderful in the 
one, because it is observed to happen at all times, 
and in every action ; whereas the other is looked 
upon as incredible, since it is seldom performed, 
viz. by the will alone. And though both reason and 
experience prove it is done, yet we suspect our- 
selves to be imposed upon, because we know not 
the manner of it/'* 

If the principle be granted that the Deity pos- 
sesses complete and perfect freedom in all his 
actions, (and I think it has been shown by the pre- 
ceding remarks that the contrary position is full of 
error and danger,) then I am of opinion that it 

* Origin of Evil, p. 190. 



CONCLUSION. 213 

would tend in some measure to enable us to frame 
a theory to account for the moral differences among" 
inankind, if we were to assume it probable that the 
Almighty had given unto man a complete but 
limited freedom of moral action ; and according to 
the different measure or degree in which this free- 
dom of the will is imparted, or the proportion it 
bears in original strength to the other mechanical 
principles of our nature, will be the peculiar moral 
complexion of his character, I am aware that the 
phrase complete but limited freedom, is liable to ob- 
jection, but this arises principally from the imper- 
fections in language. What I mean by the words 
is, that I can suppose man to be endowed with a 
certain portion of bodily, intellectual, and moral 
liberty ; but when viewed beyond the sphere of his 
freedom, appears a necessary and dependent crea- 
ture. I can suppose him to walk in a certain manner 
and to a certain length, to think of certain things, 
and to perform certain actions, just when and \\ow 
he pleases or wills ; but that he is prevented, from 
the stern necessity of his condition, from flying in 
the air, or removing mountains by his own indivi- 
dual and unassisted strength. These few explanatory 
remarks will enable my readers, I hope, to form $ 



214 THEORETICAL REMARKS. 

conception off what I mean by the phrase, complete 
but limited freedom. 

If iiien are possessed at all of any thing which we 
denominate uniformly by the terms free-will or 
liberty, then I do not conceive there is any thing 
extravagant in supposing this power, like his other 
powers, may be imparted to him, in various degrees, 
and may act as a counteracting principle of variable 
intensity upon the other powers of his nature. 
Some men are born with more physical strength, 
and a greater portion of beauty and symmetry of 
shape than others ; and there is also a striking and 
marked original difference in their mental powers 
and capacities. This inequality in the principle 
which we suppose does create the great moral dif- 
ferences amongst the species, would only be in ac- 
cordance with the whole economy of nature ; for 
there is hot, perhaps, in the whole range of animat- 
ed creation, two individual creatures that are pre- 
cisely the same in all their shapes, capacities, in- 
stincts, and powers. The same remark is applica- 
ble to men. 

To suppose some principle which also creates in 
our moral constitution an individual inequality, 
cloes riot, in my opinion, savour of any thing which 



CONCLUSION. 215 

can be characterised as extravagant. The inequality 
amongst moral natures, is a fact which forces itself 
upon the observation of the most careless and un- 
reflecting ; but the only question is, what is it 
which creates this difference ? I would say it is the 
inequality in the strength of the will, or voluntary 
power, which, of course, is liable to be materially 
affected by our various circumstances in life, and 
different modes of moral education. 

But, without pursuing these speculations further, 
I beg to conclude with observing, that whether 
these suggestions be feasible or not, they do not by 
any means form a necessary part in the establishing 
of my original position, that our praise and blame 
of moral or immoral actions, are greatly influenced 
and regulated by our conceptions of the free-will 
of the agent. This has, I think, been shown in 
the preceding pages. But I am fully aware this 
opinion may be liable to objection, for theories on 
human nature will ever be liable to a difference of 
opinion and sentiment. It is, however, the duty 
of every one to promulgate and believe in that 
which, though not out of the reach of difficulties 
and disputes, does, in his opinion, appear the least 
objectionable, and which seems to harmonize with 
those general and important principles, which are 



216 CONCLUSION. 

acknowledged by all parties to exercise a uniform 
and extensive influence over our conduct and 
sentiments, at every period, and in every situation 
of our lives* 



FINIS. 



ERRATA. 

Page 72, line !, for " as to," read " or" 

72, line 14, for «* constituted" read " constitutes 

75, line 16, for " either," read " other" 

- 93, line 6 from bottom, for "in," read " on" 

■ 171, line 21, for " man," read « men" 

— 186, line 17, for " no," read " a.' 



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